


Closed Set

by racketghost



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: (Except When Fucking Crowley), All consenting parties all the time, Anal Sex, Awkward First Times, Aziraphale Gives Approximately Zero Fucks, Bad Dirty Talk, Bad Sex, Blackmail, Canon Compliant, Crowley is a slut in theory not in practice, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Friends to Lovers, Fuck Or Die, Gratuitous Use of Porno Categories, I Must Eat Your Ass To Save You, I Must Wade Through a River of Angst For My Sex Tape, It's all about the YEARNING, Jealous Crowley (Good Omens), M/M, Oh Ho Ho Watch Me, Oral Sex, Pining Like a Boss, Power Outage Babyyy, Questionable First Times, Rimming, Sex Tapes, This Goes Off the Rails Real Fuckin Fast, This has Very Little Plot, Who Sprayed Pine Sol in Here?, and general anxiety, becoming human, bros to more than bros, dub-con but not really, fucking while pining, horny hearts, oral hygiene is real sexy, performance anxiety, revenge porn, romanticizing of toothbrushes, the recorder version of My Heart Will Go On, they're switches bitches, this is a hot fucking mess, zero to rim job in four days
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:28:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 95,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23320960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/racketghost/pseuds/racketghost
Summary: Crowley has been harboring a dirty secret and Hell-- six-months post Armageddon-- would like to see the receipts.Or, takeZack and Miri Make a Pornoand give it to a writer who takes everything too seriously.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 2081
Kudos: 1801
Collections: Good Omens Rom Com Event





	1. prologue: dirt

**Author's Note:**

> This bears very little resemblance to the delightful film _Zack and Miri Make a Porno_. Kevin Smith I am _so sorry_.

There had been a morning then, when he first noticed it.

A morning like any other— oppressive spring clouds and a sky promising an afternoon cloudburst, the launderette across the street pumping out a perfume of fabric softener and tight green buds lined up like Christmas lights on every tree. Completely normal. Nothing different.

He had stepped out onto the wet pavement that morning and had breathed in the smell of petrichor, of something else behind it. The eerie shift of a wind with something uncanny on its back. Something like unease.

He had reached for the cigarette tucked up behind his ear and had gone to light it and nothing had happened. No fire. No spark.

He had shook his hand then. Flexed his fingers. Tried again.

Nothing.

On the street the people passing by him would have commented on how he had looked at his entire limb as if it had offended him. As if he no longer recognized his own arm, his own hand.

But the skin had looked the same and the clothes had looked the same and he could not detect anything out of place. There had simply been a lack of fire where there once had been.

There had been the delicate placing of the cigarette back into its paper carton in his pocket, a long slow slide of his eyebrow up towards his hairline. He had looked across the street then— into the windows of cars, up along the tops of the buildings, into the shops— looking for a familiar unwelcome face— parting his lips to subtly taste the air, testing for sulphur, a bit of brimstone.

But he had not seen anything and he had not tasted anything and if the drive to Aziraphale’s bookshop that morning had been considerably slower, considerably more difficult— the Bentley suddenly registering that it had a fuel-gage and no longer automatically veering around pedestrians— he did not find it appropriate to say anything.

Armageddon had been averted and life had kept moving forward. Aziraphale had finally— months later— seemed to settle down. He had finally stopped looking over his shoulder every five minutes, had finally been able to sit next to Crowley on public transport, shoulder to shoulder at cafes.

Aziraphale, Crowley had decided, did not need to know about a sudden shift in the breeze, the lack of fire in his fingertips, the purchasing of petrol for a car that had previously not needed it for one-hundred years.

What the angel needed was to relax, he had thought, and to not worry about anything, and to just sit in that bookshop that no longer smells like smoke. 

When the missive from Hell finally came, he wouldn’t— Crowley had already decided— need to know about that either.


	2. hot points

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gonna add a little content warning for a brief moment of vomiting in this chapter.

“Fucking hell.”

He is drinking bourbon straight from the bottle. It burns somewhat more than usual.

“This has to be a joke,” he mutters to that empty room, that stone floor.

He has a gifted ability for shooting himself in the foot. A backlog of ideas that had backfired in spectacular and truly terrible fashion. There had been the Jacobites, the Flanders uprising, that fair bit of magic that caused an entire witch-hunt in Scotland. There had been the unintentional side effect of spoiling grain in early America with a hallucinogenic fungus when he had only ever been after a bit of fun. The M-25 motorway design when he had needed to get to Tadfield and the missing Antichrist. The destroyed cell-phone towers when he had _really_ needed to call his best friend.

He is not drunk enough to handle the recurring echo of Aziraphale’s voice in his head from just a few months back— _evil always sows the seeds of its own destruction_.

“Why do you always have to be _right_?” He murmurs, and rubs a hand into his forehead.

But it is best, he believes, not to think about Aziraphale. He had, after all, rebuffed the idea of running off to Alpha Centauri together and had let Crowley know quite candidly that he would rather remain on a planet that was rapidly turning into goo than join him in the stars.

He takes another drink. Closes his eyes. Grits his teeth.

What they have is _enough_ , he tells himself. It’s enough. They have a steady footing and a friendship rooted in six-thousand years of shared history. Of Crowley hanging about like a persistent buzzing insect and Aziraphale only occasionally swatting him away.

And since Armageddon the swatting has become less frequent. The friendship, he hopes, has become deeper. Perhaps it had been Crowley’s acknowledgment that _yes, okay, fine_ — he is just a _bit_ of a good person. 

He crunches the crisped bit of paper that stinks of brimstone in his fist and drops it onto the floor, by the foot of his fireplace grate.

He has half a mind of burning it but he knows it won’t take— everything in Hell or from Hell has the unfortunate power of being incombustible. Like himself. Incombustible except, he thinks, when his own damnable mouth decides to open and proverbially blow himself up.

He inhales and tries to steady his breathing, tries to not let the sharp edge of anxiety into his lungs. He has dinner plans with Aziraphale soon and a bottle of wine on the counter and it will not do, he thinks, to have a glass of panic with supper.

He blinks down into the fireplace grate, the bottle neck still lashed in his hands, decides he should sober up. And then he closes his eyes, does the familiar motion of pulling alcohol up through his bloodstream— a tongue on the roof of his mouth, a certain gritting of the teeth—

And nothing happens.

He opens his eyes, quickly closes them again. Swallows.

He should’ve expected it— what with the lack of fire from his fingertips, the Bentley suddenly requiring petrol— lightbulbs which after thirty years of faithful service abruptly burning themselves out. Of course this would go too. He should’ve known.

He opens his eyes again, flexes his hand. He looks down at the lines on his palm, hopes his skin will hold, wonders what will go next.

A chill runs up his spine, like a single finger traveling up it, and he does not want to consider what it will be like to lose his grip on this skin and shiver apart into another one.

There are maggots there. Burnt skin. Pockets of bubbles and pus. It is not pretty. There are some scales and sometimes a lack of limbs. Some fangs too long for any one creature to have. Nothing beguiling or charming. Something twisted in the bones of his spine.

He looks around his flat and wonders how far the power outage will go.

His home is comprised entirely of things that work on some account of imagination, of expectation. He has never paid a water bill, an electricity bill— has never even purchased his own clothes. He wonders wildly if the threads on his back will begin to disappear too— snake away into the ether like smoke.

The timepiece on his wrist turns over a new number— a warning that he has an angel who is only punctual for dinner plans waiting for him across town. He has a few hours yet to sober up the way that humans do— with water and time, and he empties the rest of the bottle down his kitchen drain, endeavoring to remove the temptation to finish it.

He watches the amber liquid flow out and down and wonders how well a six-thousand year old body can function without a miracle.

* * *

First the television went. Then the climate control.

He found one morning that his houseplants no longer responded to his threats and a number of them came down with a staggering infestation of both fungus gnats and thrips.

It has been nearly a week, and things are getting worse.

He has also found, for instance, that he can no longer digest copious amounts of alcohol and the result of that inability has led to this— vomiting up single malt scotch in Aziraphale’s nearly unused bathroom.

He had stumbled reeling drunk up the back steps in the bookshop, up the novella-stacked stairwell in the dark to the tiny bathroom on the second floor.

“ _Crowley_ ,” his name in Aziraphale’s mouth is one-part chastisement and one-part fondness. “How did you manage to drink enough for this? You haven’t vomited since the 1980s.”

Aziraphale steps closer and threads his hands through Crowley’s hair, gathers the long bits up on the top of his head.

He gets butterflies even as his stomach clenches— and Crowley has a moment of gratitude for his very human response to excessive vice.

“And before that it was— Oh, it had been a while I think—“

Aziraphale is talking and petting the back of his neck as if Crowley _isn’t_ violently seizing into his toilet.

“ _Rome_ ,” Crowley gasps out, and sits back.

Aziraphale’s hands leave the back of his neck, the top of his head, and Crowley’s skin chills in their absence. He closes his eyes and can hear the tap running.

“You vomited in _Rome_?”

There is a hand tucking a lock of hair behind his ear and Crowley opens his eyes, finds Aziraphale presenting him with a hand towel.

“I did.” Crowley takes it and lays it across his face, leans back against the wall. “I’ll never eat oysters again.”

He can feel it when Aziraphale slides down the wall next to him, their shoulders pressed together. Those butterflies flap their wings.

“That house brown,” Aziraphale says. “It was rather strong.”

“I think it was the oysters that did me in though,” Crowley says, and slides the towel off his face. “No proper refrigeration in those days.” He rolls his head over and looks at Aziraphale next to him. “Remind me to never again eat seafood.”

Aziraphale makes a small noise of agreement and Crowley watches, his heart somewhere in his throat as the angel scrunches up his nose.

“It’s like the dill-sauce.” His nose scrunches up the tiniest amount, remembering the gross extravagance of their first post-Armageddon meal. Aziraphale hadn’t been quite right for a few days after managing to put back portions that were more suited for four people than one.

He tilts his head, as if remembering. “And the foie gras.”

Crowley manages a tiny noise of disgust and closes his eyes, “let’s not discuss food.”

“For the best, probably,” Aziraphale says, and shifts a bit— the wiggle pressing their shoulders together.

Their thighs are touching, just barely, and the warmth of it distracts Crowley from the incredible pounding headache that is blossoming between his eyes. They sit and breathe in the quiet noises of nightfall for a handful of minutes, listening to the hum of the toilet-tank refilling.

“Think you’ll survive then?”

Crowley peels apart his eyelids and rolls his head over to stare at Aziraphale so close to him. A thread of panic laces through him at the joke.

But there is a shine in his eye and a quirk to his lip and the bathroom lighting does something soft to Aziraphale’s gaze, shifts the colors of his irises into sea-glass.

“M’not sure yet,” Crowley says, “might have to toss me out with the rubbish.”

Aziraphale tilts his head back and smiles, stares up at his ceiling.

“Cobwebs,” he says idly.

Crowley follows his gaze up to the ceiling.

“You’re _filthy_.”

Aziraphale slaps the back of his hand against Crowley’s leg.

“That is _my_ toilet you just heaved into,” he says.

Crowley laughs and then immediately regrets it, bringing a hand up to rub against his eyes.

“Don’t make me laugh,” he moans.

“Headache then?”

“Something like that.”

He is not about to admit that what is afflicting him is actually a six-thousand year old crush that he has nursed like a war-wound since the beginning of time combined with his former head office blackmailing him for having it.

It is silent. The tap drips.

“Think you’ll toss again?” Aziraphale asks.

“Mm, nah.”

“That’s good.”

At that Aziraphale stands up, dusts off the back of his trousers and then reaches down, offers Crowley a sturdy palm.

“Let’s head downstairs then?” He asks, “maybe get you something for that headache? You can sit on the sofa and I’ll read you Frankenstein again. If you’d like.”

Crowley blinks tiredly at the proffered palm, the square fingers, the pink color of it, and then looks up at Aziraphale— wondering what he had ever done in his shitty demonic existence to deserve such a truly magnificent friend.

* * *

The paper missive from Hell is now exactly one month old. And Crowley, with his fingertips still without fire and his television no longer functional, is beginning to think that Hell is quite serious.

He can recall— _once_ — Aziraphale telling him that Heaven had sent him a _strongly worded note_ on the subject of _too many frivolous miracles_.

He had told Aziraphale then that his lot did not send rude notes as warnings— and while it is as true then as it is now, he considers that the letter in his pocket outlining exactly _why_ the room is currently spinning is, in fact, rather rude.

He sways where he stands, suddenly altogether quite lightheaded.

His head aches and weakness is stretched across every tendon in his body until the whole of himself feels pulled thin. Empty.

“Crowley?”

He can hear Aziraphale’s voice but it sounds rather far away. He turns towards it anyway.

“Hmm?” He manages, blinking at the particularly bright bit of sunlight coming through the bookshop windows.

“Are— are you alright?”

He isn’t, not quite, but he really is not certain _why_.

He has never experienced this feeling before.

“I uh,” he pulls off his glasses and squeezes his eyes shut, rubs a hand across them. “I have a bit of a— mm, I don’t know. A headache?”

Aziraphale pops a confused eyebrow at him.

Crowley waves his hand around, “just feel— sort of off.”

“Come,” Aziraphale says, and takes him by the arm, wheeling him around the piles of books they have been organizing. “ _Sit_.”

He lets himself be cajoled into a particularly overstuffed armchair and drops his head back.

He can feel Aziraphale hovering somewhere to his left.

“M’fine,” he murmurs, even though Aziraphale has said nothing. “I can _hear_ the gears in your head turning.”

“I’m only just—“

Crowley pops open an eye to see Aziraphale wringing his hands together, staring off outside the window.

“I’m just _jumpy_ , you know. Since the whole— _mess_.”

He had been jumpy before that too but Crowley, with an ache between his eyebrows and pit in his stomach, isn’t about to say so.

“There’s no need to be jumpy,” Crowley says, even though he has a paper envelope on his desk at home that clearly says otherwise. “This isn’t any of that. It’s just a headache.” He says, and immediately bites his cheek at the lie.

Aziraphale sighs and looks at him, scanning over his knees, his hips, his shoulders. “Are you sure they didn’t— I don’t know,” he wrings his hands together again, “put holy water in your wine? Could they be— _attacking_ you with some occult forces?”

“ _Angel_ ,” Crowley says, and squeezes his eyes closed again, “you are _not_ helping this very normal and very human headache.”

The word _human_ sends a barb of fear straight into his chest but he ignores it, pushes back against the stick of it there.

He can feel Aziraphale perch on the arm of the chair.

“I’m sure you’re right,” he says, “but you _never_ used to get _headaches_. And this is the second in as many days and—”

Crowley rubs a hand along his jaw, presses into the indents by his temple.

“Just feelin’ a bit weak from all this unpaid labor. What do I have to do to get a smoke break around here?”

He can hear Aziraphale suck at his teeth.

“You have been staring at your phone playing _Rollercoaster Tyrant_ for an hour—“

“—Rollercoaster _Tycoon_.”

“—probably killing those poor riders and— oh.” He pauses at the remarkable bit of noise growling up from Crowley’s stomach.

He looks up. Looks down.

“ _Oh_. Crowley are you— are you _hungry_?”

“ _What_?”

It’s a ridiculous question. Crowley doesn’t _get_ hungry. He gets thirsty for booze and occasionally craves cigarettes but he exceedingly rarely ever gets actually _hungry_. And the feeling always, _always_ passes.

“ _Hungry_ ,” Aziraphale says again, “when was the last time you ate?”

“About two hundred years ago,” he says, “unless you count that angel’s food cake you forced me to take a bite of last week.”

Aziraphale stands and disappears into the backroom, into that tiny kitchenette.

“Stay there,” he calls from the back room.

There are the pleasant tinkling pantry sounds of Aziraphale puttering there— a glass being fetched and placed on the tiny butcher block counter next to the stove, the rustling of a bag. Crowley can hear the kettle whistling. A knife spread over crisped bread. He closes his eyes and loses himself in the sound, lets his tongue come out to gather up the taste of jam in the air, of butter, of _angel_.

And then Aziraphale is turning the corner with a tiny tray of two steaming cups, a neatly stacked tower of toast.

“Just for a nibble,” he says, and sticks the tray under his nose.

“This is—“ Crowley looks up at Aziraphale, “this is ridiculous. _You_ are ridiculous.”

Aziraphale, nonplussed, lifts the tea cup to his lips.

“Three sugars,” he says.

Crowley rolls his eyes exactly once to let him know how absurd he is being and then sucks down a considerable amount of liquid.

It’s all together too sweet and just a bit north of too strong but he drinks it down anyway. He pulls back and reluctantly takes the teacup from Aziraphale’s hand.

There is the long-suffering arch of an eyebrow and then the plate of toast is placed down on the arm of the chair, Aziraphale taking a spot across from him against the register.

“Go on,” he says, and waves a hand at him in encouragement.

Crowley levels him with an unamused glare and then noisily slurps the overly sweetened tea.

A moment passes and he can _feel_ it hit him. Sugar pumping back into an altogether too human bloodstream. Before he realizes it a moan is slipping out of his mouth and the cup is empty.

His eyes open and he sees Aziraphale smiling primly down at him.

“Good, yes?”

Crowley stares at him flatly.

“Eat some toast too, dear.”

Crowley will not admit that the word _dear_ also pumps sugar into his bloodstream.

Aziraphale does that sort of charming full-body wiggle he does when he’s right about something and is leaning whole-heartedly into the pleasure of it. Crowley watches the shift of Aziraphale’s shoulders in his pale blue shirt as he turns back to his desk, the ridiculous bow tie that he has a sudden desire to unravel with his teeth.

“Let’s order a bit of take away too? For lunch? I’m quite peckish myself.”

He looks down into his empty cup and tries not to think about the heat in his ears, the pleasant humming of Aziraphale as he slides his fingers over the spine of the ancient telephone.

“Thanks,” he says finally. “Not sure what came over me,” he mutters, even though he has a very good idea indeed.

* * *

_One week later_

“You— Crowley,” Aziraphale is studying him across the white stretch of table cloth, “are you… _drunk_?”

“It is…. _possible_ m’drunk,” he says to his glass, to the slowly melting ice cube inside of it.

“How can you be intoxicated we haven’t even ordered _dinner_ yet?”

Crowley smoothes his hands across the table cloth, feels the spectacular grain of its linen. The Ritz, he realizes in his intoxicated state, truly did not skimp on _anything_.

“No wonder this place is so bloody expensive,” he hiccups, nearly face down on the table. “This table cloth is _nice_.”

Aziraphale clears his throat rather loudly, and Crowley can feel more than see him looking around the room.

“My dear would you perhaps consider sobering up?”

“M’only _slightly_ drunk, angel,” he slurs, arms spread across the table and why does his head feel so heavy? Perhaps he can just rest it—

“ _Crowley_ ,” Aziraphale whispers hotly, “pick up your head this instant people are _staring_ at you.”

“But it’s _comfortable_ ,” he insists, and he realizes that his sunglasses are getting rather in the way of his pillow— the plate.

There is that delightfully frustrated shifting of the shoulders that Aziraphale does. The slight flexing of his jaw.

Crowley stares up at him and realizes that it is much too dim, he cannot properly see the pink of Aziraphale’s cheeks, the cornflower blue of his eyes. He pulls off his sunglasses.

At that Aziraphale sits stock upright, furtively glancing around the room.

“Crowley,” he says, his voice a low warning, “put those back on would you?”

“But it’s somewhat dark in here, innit?” he says, and blinks.

“Dark?” Aziraphale asks, puzzled. And then he clears his throat, swallows, straightens his dessert spoon. “Sober up, dear boy.”

“Can’t,” Crowley blurts out, and then slaps a hand over his mouth.

“Of course you can. Here,” Aziraphale drains his water glass, slides it across the table to him, “fill this. I’ll make sure no one is watching.”

Crowley stares down at it, chews on his lip. He looks back up at Aziraphale.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Aziraphale asks, furrowing his brow, “you only look at me like that when you have done something bad.”

“Mm, I may have,” Crowley admits. “Something _very_ bad. Comes with the territory. Bein’ a demon and all.”

Aziraphale straightens his spine, looks around the room.

“Will you _please_ keep your voice down?” He whispers.

Crowley sniffs.

“Now,” Aziraphale starts, ignoring Crowley’s increasingly more boneless slide into the table, “are you going to explain to me why you are being so slovenly?”

Crowley hiccups.

“Cause this cocktail is stronger than I thought. So was the one before it… and the one before _that—_ ”

Aziraphale, Crowley thinks, does not need to know that increasingly mortal bodies hold their alcohol somewhat less efficiently than occult ones.

Aziraphale pinches the bridge of his nose and squeezes his eyes shut.

“It’s only your _third_ drink,” Aziraphale says, with the frustration of one whose drinking buddy very regularly polished off entire bottles of Irish whiskey over the course of an evening and now cannot understand the sudden lack of a tolerance. “Would you do me the favor of getting sober?” He asks again, decidedly less sweetly.

Crowley picks his head up, strokes absentmindedly at his throat.

“I told you _I can’t_.”

“Why not?” Aziraphale whispers, hushed.

Crowley blinks at him slowly. The rooms feels like it’s spinning and he is suddenly not so sure the cocktails had been a good idea— even if he had needed the liquid courage to tell Aziraphale about the rather rude notes his former head office has been sending him.

“Power’s out,” Crowley says, and then produces a kind of stutteringly stupid laugh. “The _bloody_ power is out,” he says again, with considerably more volume.

Aziraphale looks for all the world like he will hold his disrupted dinner plans against Crowley for the next thousand years.

“Okay,” Aziraphale wipes demurely at his chin with his napkin, and then rises gracefully to his feet. “Get up, would you?” He says, kindly enough but clearly with no room for debate. “If you are going to talk in riddles we should leave.”

“I like riddles.”

“Yes, dear. Now I think it is time that I take you home.”

“Always wanted to hear you say that,” Crowley says dreamily, now leaning all the way back in his chair, the front legs lifting up off the floor.

“I suppose I’ll be driving then,” Aziraphale says, and reaches into Crowley’s pocket for the keys.

* * *

He has, unfortunately, sobered up considerably by the time they arrive at the bookshop. Just enough to regret the past hour and exactly everything he had said in it.

He’s upset, Crowley knows. He can tell by the way he hangs up his coat with a sigh, the way he fusses with his pockets, fiddles with the pinkie ring. Crowley had, he supposes, committed one of Aziraphale’s greatest of sins— he had interrupted dinner.

“M’sorry,” Crowley mutters, and leans against the doorframe. “We could’ve stayed.”

“You—“ Aziraphale stops himself and exhales, stares ahead at the line of his detested Jeffery Archer books along the wall. “First the glasses came off and then the _abysmal_ table manners and— I don’t know what’s going on with you, lately.”

Crowley looks down at his feet, scuffs them against the floor. And then he pushes up off the door frame and ambles his way into the back room, down onto the familiar sofa.

“I’m—“ Aziraphale follows after, holds himself very still in the doorway, “I’m sorry, my dear. You know I’m still a bit… jumpy. About everything.” He gives a half-hearted wave of his hand as if in explanation and Crowley knows he is still uptight about getting caught— being seen. Even if just by humans. He isn’t sure what would happen to him if humans got a good look at his eyes, decided to start up another round of witch-hunts.

“They aren’t gonna burn me at the stake again,” he says.

Aziraphale twists his hands together, stares at them.

“I know I just— I’d like for things to just be… even-keel for a bit. Find our feet.”

“Was I _that_ dreadful?” He drawls.

Aziraphale fixes him with a deadpan eye.

“You began telling the waitstaff that you were the legendary _sphinx_.”

Crowley opens his mouth, closes it. “You did claim I was speaking in riddles.”

Aziraphale pinches the bridge of his nose and exhales.

“I’m sorry,” Crowley says, not all together truthfully, and holds up his hands. His stomach growls.

“Did—“ Aziraphale looks pointedly at his stomach, “did your stomach just—?”

Crowley is looking down at himself too, at the source of the strange gurgling noise.

“No,” he lies.

It protests again. Loudly. 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale is narrowing his eyes at him, looking from stomach to face and back again. “Would you care to explain to me what is happening?”

“Nothing,” Crowley says, and leans back on the sofa.

“I’ve always said that you were a bad liar,” Aziraphale says. “Considering you’re a demon and all.”

Crowley rolls his head over and glares at him.

“Come now,” Aziraphale says, and there is an edge to his voice “Spit it out. You haven’t been right in weeks.”

“I’ve just—“ Crowley flexes his hand out in front of him, “I’m fine,” he settles on.

The line of Aziraphale’s mouth hardens.

“You actually lit a cigarette with a _lighter_ the other day.”

Crowley resolutely does not look at him. He lifts a single shoulder instead.

“So?”

“You have been smoking since they invented _breathing_ and not once have you ever used anything other than your thumb to light them.”

Crowley feels his tongue along his fangs and wonders if perhaps befriending such an astute and observant angel had really been such a good idea.

“You also have vomited _twice_ from alcohol consumption, you get drunk nearly immediately, and I am beginning to think it has something to do with your utter lack of eating and,” Aziraphale pauses and Crowley looks up— to see him fiddling with that pinkie ring again, looking reproachfully down at his hands.

“And?” Crowley has a very distinct sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, like he knows that whatever is about to come out of Aziraphale’s mouth will hit like a punch to the gut and he is precognitively feeling the blow.

“Well,” Aziraphale will not look up at him and the pain in Crowley’s stomach twists, “it’s not a big deal, really. But I did notice that you… perhaps took a bit of paper currency from my till the other day and—“

Crowley groans and leans backward across the couch, covering his face with his hands.

“It’s really quite alright but you’ve never done it before and— Crowley.”

At that he peels back his hands, just a bit, just to peek over the edges of them at Aziraphale standing at the foot of the sofa.

“Are you in financial trouble?”

The question hangs in the air for one stupefied moment before Crowley barks out a laugh.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he mutters, and sits upright.

“I’m not sure what kind of monetary recompense Hell bequeaths you with but I’m sure it must’ve dried up since— since—“

“Angel,” Crowley stops him, “I’m not,” he groans and squeezes his eyes shut, “I’m not in _financial_ trouble. I needed petrol and ran out of cash. I’ll pay you back.”

One would think— after six-thousand years— that Crowley would know better than to try and outsmart Aziraphale.

“But you are in _trouble_ ,” Aziraphale parses out, staring at him intently.

They have been using double-speak for enough millennia that the slight uptick in the cadence of Crowley’s voice on the word _financial_ could only mean that Aziraphale was meant to omit it entirely.

“I… suppose you could say that,” Crowley admits.

“Wait,” Aziraphale narrows his eyes. “The Bentley needs… _fuel_ now?”

“Ah,” Crowley says delicately. “Fuck.”

Aziraphale stares down at him curiously, eyebrows knitted together.

“Crowley… what is going on?”

Crowley flexes his jaw and stares at him, uncertain of how to even begin.

“ _Tell_ me,” Aziraphale persists.

“I just— I uh,” he isn’t sure how to say it, how to form the idea of it into words.

“Listen I may have… fabricated some of my uh, _wiles_ ,” Crowley starts, looking everywhere but Aziraphale’s face.

He can hear Aziraphale sucking at his teeth.

“Of course you _fabricated_ things. You took credit for the Spanish Inquisition.” There is an edge of frustration in Aziraphale’s voice. Something that very distinctly says, _get to the point, dear_.

Crowley shifts into the sofa, breathes down into his hands on his lap.

“Yeah— well. I fabricated some… pretty _big_ wiles.”

“Bigger than the _Spanish Inquisition_?”

Crowley chews on the inside of his cheek, his ears feeling suddenly very hot.

“In a manner of speaking.”

“It’s Hell, then? They’re… doing something to you?”

Crowley scratches the back of his neck and leans his face into the crook of his own elbow, wishing he could crawl up and disappear there.

“Please,” Aziraphale is stepping firmly into his view, a pair of smart oxfords appearing nearly between his spread feet, “just tell me what they want.”

Crowley pauses, swallows, tries to find air.

“The tapes.”

He releases a breath that feels like has been inside of him since the 90s, since he told that ridiculous lie.

“The _tapes_?”

“Yes.”

“Tapes of what?”

“Just—you know,” he waves vaguely. There is a strange sort of blockage in his throat, strangling his words. His voice cracks. “ _Tapes._ ”

Aziraphale has the devastating ability to look at him as if he is seeing underneath his glasses, his clothes— right down underneath his skin. It has been a pleasant and sometimes uncanny ability. To be seen by another so completely is a blessing, yes, and also a curse.

“So give them the tapes,” he says, confounded at Crowley drawing out such an exasperatingly simple solution.

“I… can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because they don’t _exist_.”

Those gray eyes are darting between his, confused. And then he looks away, rubbing a hand across his face.

“You told them you have some mysterious tapes that don’t exist,” Aziraphale says flatly. “And now they are… _blackmailing_ you for them?”

“Got it in one,” Crowley says weakly.

“By… taking away your ability to drink?”

“I think,” Crowley starts carefully, “that they are slowly turning me… human.”

Aziraphale’s face has turned an altogether ashen shade of pale, his eyes wide and uncertain.

“Human,” he breathes.

“ _Human_.”

“That’s why— _Oh_. You need to _eat_ now.”

“I need to eat.”

“And you can’t hold your—“

“Yeah,” he murmurs. “Can’t drink you under the table anymore, angel.” He tries to smile but can’t.

“Well,” Aziraphale licks his lips, deep in thought, “why don’t you just… fabricate some sort of approximation? Give them what they want?”

Crowley can distinctly feel the blood draining from his face, a curious tingling in his fingertips. He clears his throat, scratches a finger beneath the suddenly too-tight collar of his shirt.

“Because— because _I can’t_.”

Aziraphale exhales, rubs at his forehead.

“You’re going to have to tell me whatever is going on, Crowley. Explicitly.”

Crowley presses his face into his hands.

“You’ll hate me.”

He can _feel_ Aziraphale rolling his eyes.

“I believe we are a bit past that.”

Crowley pulls his hands down, lets them fall flat in his lap, decides all at once perhaps it’s better to just spit it out— let Aziraphale learn this dirty secret he has harbored for so many years— _decades_.

“I told them I have about ten hours of footage of… us.”

“Footage of _us_?”

“Yeah,” he waves a hand around in the air as if to explain it, “you know, _us_.”

Aziraphale is blinking at him.

“They _knew_ about us?” He asks, as if he understands.

Crowley bends his head forward until his chin hits his chest, tries to breathe.

“Yeah,” he mutters. “They did.”

Aziraphale looks off and out the window. “This is how Michael got those photos of us?”

“Ligur,” Crowley chokes out. “He had been on to us for a while and confronted me. So then I tried to spin it. Told them I had— that we had— you know, made _tapes_ and—“

“In that case let’s just… get a camera and start filming ourselves. What does it matter? Michael already had _photos_ of us,” Aziraphale looks over his shoulder, “in fact, I think I _have_ a camera around here somewhere.”

“No— angel, _fucking hell_ ,” Crowley drops his head down into his hands and groans into his palms. “This can’t be happening,” he mumbles.

“You’re being a defeatist,” Aziraphale chides, and is suddenly busy pulling unlabeled boxes that look like they last saw light in the 1980s from a shelf.

“I’m not.” Crowley looks up, realizes he is out of options.

“Angel,” he says, but Aziraphale is still pulling various knick-knacks out of the boxes, still searching for a camera that will probably not be functional.

“Mmhmm?”

“The stuff on the tapes— It’s… it’s not just us being us.”

Aziraphale stops his excavation through history, looks up at him.

“Then what is it?”

The crushing weight of Crowley’s lie comes down hard on his shoulders at the naivety in Aziraphale’s face.

 _He doesn’t understand_ , he thinks, and has half a mind of forgetting this entire thing. It would be easier to just give up, let Hell have him back. It would be easier to just take a shot of holy water and lie down in bed, never wake up.

But Crowley swallows, and hangs his head, and says very softly, “I told them we made sex tapes.”

It is so silent in the bookshop that Crowley can hear the people walking by on the street, complaining about the weather. A woman must be wearing heels because he can hear the hollow _click click_ of her soles on the pavement, the Doppler effect as cars zoom by.

It is silent for so long that Crowley eventually looks up, into the very white and very confused face of his very best friend.

“ _You_ _what_?”

There is the tiniest bit of flushing along Aziraphale’s cheeks as the full barb of Crowley’s admission sinks in.

Crowley rubs a hand across his face, hides under it.

“I told them we made sex tapes,” he says again, underneath his fingers.

“You didn’t.”

“I did.”

He chances a look up and can see Aziraphale staring out the window, still kneeling on the floor.

“They knew about us, Aziraphale,” Crowley starts, needing to defend himself. “I had to tell them something to keep them off my back.”

“You told them we made _sex tapes_.”

Aziraphale is still not looking at him.

“It was that or I was getting hauled back down to Hell.”

“ _How_?” Aziraphale demands. “ _How_ exactly was it _that_ or getting dragged back to Hell?”

“They had—“ Crowley clears his throat and is suddenly extremely interested in the bit of crud beneath his thumbnail, “they _noticed_ us. Always being together. Ligur did. And told the whole crew. I was confronted by it one annual review meeting and I just— I tried to spin it so that I wouldn’t get in trouble. And then it kept getting brought up and the lie kept getting bigger and eventually it became a real feather in my wing.” He waves his hand a bit, refuses to look at Aziraphale’s face. “Bedding an angel, you know. I didn’t think that they would ever actually _demand proof_.” He gives up trying to contain the cold sweat on his forehead, the lack of blood flow to his face. He glances up briefly.

“You— I—“ Aziraphale is clearly sweating, his face going a bit splotchy with redness. “Is that what you _wanted_ to be doing all those years?”

Crowley pales in the dim light, can feel his heart plummet somewhere between his toes.

“ _No_ , fuck, of course not.” Crowley’s voice is perhaps a bit too insistent, a bit too strong, and the memory of Aziraphale telling him he is a bad liar bubbles in the back of his throat.

Aziraphale stands, brushing at his clothes.

“Then why invent _that_ particular lie?” His voice is much quieter now.

Crowley inhales, digs a thumbnail into his trousers.

“I don’t know. Bravado? Sheer idiocy?” He sucks his lip into his mouth and bites on it. “I shouldn’t have done it but listen, explaining to Hell that I was railing an angel looked a hell of a lot better on my resumé than just, ‘he’s my best friend and I like listening to him whinge about people actually buying things in his bookshop,’ okay?”

He is breathless and deflated, a burning vacancy replacing the shame. Numbness growing like a cancer.

Aziraphale rubs a hand across his face and leaves it there, breathing into it.

“Good _lord_ , Crowley,” Aziraphale just mutters, into those hands covering his face. “Of all the brainless, half-witted, _ridiculous_ lies you’ve told this—“

“I know, okay? _I know_.”

Aziraphale pulls his hands down from his face, sucks idly at his teeth.

“I’m sorry,” Crowley just says, and looks down at the floor.

“Okay,” Aziraphale says, staring straight ahead at a bookcase. “This is what we are going to do.”

Crowley’s heart is all together a bit too loud in his chest, he thinks, a bit too eager. He glances up at him.

“We are going to go into the storage room, and crack open that case of Chateau Petrus Pomerol, and…” he licks his lips, glances out of the corner of his eye to Crowley on the sofa, “come up with a plan.”

“A plan,” Crowley says flatly.

“ _Yes_ , a _plan_.”

“There is no plan, angel. I’m fucked.”

Aziraphale turns a bit pink around the ears.

“Not yet you aren’t,” he says, and turns on his heel.

The double-meaning of their conversation hits Crowley approximately twenty seconds later, just in time for Aziraphale to come back in the room with a bottle of wine and two glasses in his hands.

“You need to eat something but first,” he says, and works on uncorking the bottle, sitting next to him on the sofa, “—something to take the edge off.” And pours out two very healthy glasses of wine.

“So you told them…” Aziraphale trails off, digs a frustrated finger into the collar of his shirt and loosens it, “that we have been…” he clears his throat, “ _fornicating_ for the last thirty years.”

Crowley has never discorporated before but he imagines this must be pretty close to what it feels like.

“Uh, yeah,” he says lamely, reaching for the wine like it is a life raft and he’s drowning.

“So how can we fake this?”

It might just be the wine on an empty and increasingly human stomach, but something about the word _fake_ hits him squarely in the gut.

He scrubs a hand over his face.

“If I knew I would’ve done it already,” he says tiredly.

“Have you ever _watched_ porn?”

Crowley coughs up his wine a bit, wipes the back of his hand across his chin.

“Jesus _Christ_ , I’m a demon, what the bloody hell do you think?”

Aziraphale is staring off into space, the gears in his head clearly ticking.

“We should watch some,” he decides.

“We should— _what_?” Crowley puts his wine glass down on the table and turns to face Aziraphale.

“Listen, angel. I know that I gifted you _50 Shades of Gray_ and told you it was a regency classic set in modern times but that was just a _joke_.”

Aziraphale is not listening, he is looking slowly around the room, and then pointedly at the little television from circa 1998 that has gathered so much dust that it appears gray instead of black.

“Do you suppose that shop next door still has VHS tapes?”

“Aziraphale, it’s 2020 _no one_ has VHS tapes.”

“Well,” he says, and raises a pale eyebrow, “if these tapes you allegedly made were from the 90s, don’t you suppose we should… _make_ a VHS tape?”

It feels all at once like there is a nest of squirming insects in his stomach, some of them sprouting wings.

“You want to _make_ a VHS tape,” he repeats.

“We’ll have to change with the times, of course. Move on to… what is it now? MP3 players?”

Crowley closes his eyes and exhales through his nose.

“MP3s were for _music_ , angel. About twenty years ago.”

And then it hits him— “wait,” he says, and opens his eyes, “you want to… actually _make_ a sex tape?”

Aziraphale is steadfastly _not_ looking at him, instead counting along his fingers, staring up at the ceiling, deep in thought.

“Ten hours,” he is muttering, “we will need to calculate how long an individual act of coitus takes to determine how many tapes that will amount to—“

“ _Angel_ ,” Crowley says, dumbfounded.

“—we’ll also need a list of any certain sexual _acts_ that you may have mentioned to them. If this is going to be convincing we don’t want them betting on seeing something you mentioned off-hand and not producing it—“

“ _Aziraphale.”_

Aziraphale pauses and looks at him, blinking.

“Yes?”

Crowley opens and closes his mouth a number of times.

“We… we _can’t_ ,” he finally settles on.

Aziraphale blinks at him. “Why not?”

“Because we— we don’t— you don’t have to—“ he finally gives up and exhales forcefully into the room. “This is _my_ fault. I’m not dragging you into my mess.”

Aziraphale’s gaze flattens, his mouth dissolves down into a thin line.

“Crowley you are turning _human_. Exactly how much more time do you think you have before that body of yours breaks down?”

Crowley swallows audibly and breathes down into his lap.

“I don’t know but I sure as fuck know you’re not— I’m not going to let— they aren’t gonna get to _fucking_ watch you,” he bites out, some latent protective instinct rearing its head.

“That is not,” Aziraphale says primly, “for you to decide.”

Jealousy flares under Crowley’s skin, prickling with the idea of the denizens of Hell getting to see even the interior of Aziraphale’s pale wrist.

“No,” Crowley says, and shakes his head resolutely. “Absolutely not.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale insists. “If _you’re_ consenting, of course.”

“You will come to find that I am quite stubborn, angel. I am not… making a sex tape with you. Let alone _ten hours_ of sex tape.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale says gently.

His name in that angelic mouth softens the barbed edges of himself, heals a bit of the bleeding parts.

“What?” He snaps.

The room is silent for a handful of heartbeats, a handful of breaths.

“How many times have you rescued me?”

It feels like being punched.

“ _What_?”

“How many times,” Aziraphale repeats slowly, softly, as if he is speaking to a child, a small animal, “have you saved me?”

Crowley closes his mouth with a snap.

“This isn’t like that,” he says, “I never had to— sacrifice some part of myself for you—”

“—Take off your shoes,” he interrupts.

Crowley stares at him, leveling him with an icy gaze.

“No,” he says flatly.

“You walked into a _church_ for me, Crowley. You still have scars on your feet.”

“That is _completely_ different. I had rerouted the bombs to fall on St. Mildred’s.”

“Because I was going to be _shot_ ,” Aziraphale says hotly.

Crowley’s heart is suddenly too loud, too strong— beating somewhere at the base of his throat.

“This is different,” Crowley insists, because it is.

Aziraphale reaches a hand out, spans the distance between them. It lies open-palmed on the sofa between them and Crowley stares down at it, breathing heavily.

“Let me rescue you, you blasted idiot,” Aziraphale says, and there is a lovely bit of light from a streetlamp illuminating his curls. “Let me save _you_ this time,” he breathes, and eyes look so very wet when he says it.

Crowley stares down at the open palm and then slides his own hand into it, nearly a handshake, nearly a promise. He swallows.

“If you’re certain,” he says, and doesn’t feel very certain at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know y'all.


	3. sides

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a bit of a short chapter because I realized it was getting waaaay too long. But the good news is that the next part is nearly finished and thus will be out much quicker than usual :D

“We might as well do this properly,” Aziraphale is saying, and Crowley believes perhaps he has had too much wine.

He tears off a corner of the pillowy flatbread Aziraphale had ordered for them and chews. His jaw, as if unaccustomed to the strain of having to work, _aches_.

“We should… make a production of it,” Aziraphale says, and has flatbread— _naan_ , Crowley reminds himself— in one hand and a wineglass in the other. The wine sloshes and Crowley can see the legs on it— they linger up the sides of the glass as he speaks.

“A… _production_ of it?” He asks, and can feel sweat starting on the back of his neck.

“Yes,” Aziraphale is looking somewhere up at the corners of the room, a flush on his cheeks which Crowley cannot determine is the result of a bit too much wine or a bit too much excitement. “We’ll need the appropriate film equipment. Starting the year that you first mentioned it to them and moving up to present day.”

“Early 90s,” Crowley mutters. “’91, I think. So whatever was in use then.”

“We’ll have to research that,” Aziraphale says. “But I need _you_ to really think about whatever it was that you mentioned to them. Even if it was in passing.”

“I mean— I told them I filmed us having sex. A lot.” He can feel his face heat and he sucks at his teeth. “That we were— That I was—“ He groans and scrubs a hand into his face. “That I had tempted you into being my— lover, or whatever,” he finishes lamely.

Aziraphale takes a long, slow sip of his wine and then carefully sets it down on the table.

“I would like to make a list,” he starts. “Of acts. To have a game plan, so to speak.”

Crowley’s skin prickles. The hair on the back of his neck stands up. It feels simultaneously like there is a weight on his shoulders and a booted foot pressing on his throat.

“A list of acts,” he repeats, and it feels like that bread is stuck in his windpipe.

“Yes,” Aziraphale says, and he has pulled a notepad out from beneath the scattered empty takeaway containers, has procured a pen from somewhere within the mess on the table. “I’m sure you mentioned some particulars to them and I want to make certain that we include them. We can check them off as we go.”

Aziraphale pours himself another glass of wine and picks it up again.

“So?” Aziraphale asks, and looks up at him expectantly.

He feels lightheaded, dizzy with the entire mortifying notion that in a very small timeframe he will be having actual sexual intercourse with Aziraphale and he cannot consume his typical entire bottle of whiskey without afflicting himself with alcohol poisoning.

He desperately wants a cigarette.

“Uh,” Crowley says delicately.

He takes a sip and Crowley watches the shadows dance on Aziraphale’s cheeks, lips, throat as he swallows, thoughtful. The streetlight through the window casts chiaroscuro stripes along the angel’s skin. The lamplight behind him lines him in gold. He looks every bit the angelic ethereal creature he is and Crowley’s breath catches a bit in his throat. Butterflies flutter up in his chest.

Aziraphale sets his glass down again, looks primly down at his notepad.

“You said _railing_ earlier which would imply that I am, in fact, the receiving party.”

The angelic illusion vanishes. Crowley nearly chokes.

“I mean, not _always_ ,” he spits out, and then wishes he hadn’t.

“Oh,” Aziraphale looks up at him and quirks an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Yeah. I mean.” Crowley shrugs and attempts to appear nonchalant. “Variety is good.”

Aziraphale considers that. “Variety _is_ good,” he agrees, as if commenting on new additions to a restaurant menu.

Crowley tries valiantly to think of a sex act other than _blowjobs_ but continually comes up short. He considers it must have something to do with having watched Aziraphale eat all evening— the result of which commonly led to him losing higher brain function.

“So we will take turns being the receiving partner,” Aziraphale says. “Switches, I suppose is the term?”

Aziraphale, Crowley is learning, is remarkably unruffled by sex talk. He chokes a bit on his wine.

“I suppose it is.” He coughs.

“Also if we had been doing this for a while by the time you told them about it we would’ve… graduated to some interesting acts, don’t you think? Up the ante, as they say, as we go?”

Crowley can feel himself go pale.

“What, uh, did you have in mind?”

“Well, we should go through all of the usuals, I think,” he starts, looking down at his notepad in deep thought. “Is manual stimulation too… vanilla?”

Crowley opens and closes his mouth a few times. A strange sort of withering noise comes out.

Aziraphale either doesn’t hear it or ignores him.

“Oral sex, of course.”

“Oh, of course,” Crowley mutters, and tries to act like all of this is perfectly normal.

“Anal sex, lengthy digital penetration for both practical and timely matters— we’ll have to fill those ten hours somehow,” Aziraphale comments offhand, as if discussing the wine they are drinking, the food they are eating.

Crowley has the distinct feeling of vertigo, a sensation like he is about to faint.

“Research should be done to determine which sexual positions are _camera friendly_ , so to speak.” Aziraphale looks steadfastly academic.

“Jesus tap-dancing Christ,” Crowley mutters, and leans his head down into his hands, trying to breathe steadily.

“—perhaps some light bondage? Spanking? Incorporating toys? Role-play— ”

“ _Bondage_ ,” Crowley repeats, looking up.

“—Oh, yes we should absolutely discuss safe word use. Also any potential acts you wish to avoid.”

Crowley stares at him across the bookshop backroom, his heartbeat pounding in his ears.

“Did you—“ he squints at him, “did you _actually_ read _Fifty Shades of Gray_?”

Aziraphale looks personally affronted.

“Of course I did,” he sniffs. “It was a _gift_.”

For the first time in what feels like decades, Crowley laughs. It is more than slightly hysterical and something akin to a teakettle going off but it feels good all the same.

“You absolute bastard,” Crowley says fondly, covering his face with one hand. The words _I love you_ nearly spill out afterwards and he bites them back, swallows down against the lump in his throat.

Aziraphale looks decidedly pink about the ears and there is a very small smile to his mouth and Crowley has half a mind of telling him how good it looks on him— that he should always look so happy.

“You didn’t have to,” Crowley murmurs, and pulls his hand down. “It was meant as a joke.”

“Well, I’m quite glad I did,” Aziraphale says, looking down at his lap and picking at an errant thread there. “So that we will know exactly what _not_ to do.”

* * *

“That is _not_ an acceptable safe word, Crowley.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not.”

They have perhaps had too much to drink and it is perhaps too late, but Aziraphale, Crowley is learning, is an astute planner.

And he will not stop tonight until he has arrived at what he deems to be a suitable plan of attack.

“I’m just saying, angel that no one would ever say _safe word_ in the middle of fucking. It is a _perfect_ safe word.”

He has collapsed into an altogether liquid sprawl across one of the overstuffed chairs opposite the leather Chesterfield sofa— which Aziraphale has covered in various ripped out pages of one yellow legal pad.

“You are incorrigible. This is improper.”

“It’s _extremely_ proper. What better safe word could there be other than _safe word_? It will be very post-modern of us.”

“I cannot cope with you like this,” Aziraphale says, and runs a weary hand over his face. “You aren’t taking this seriously and we don’t even a list of places you mentioned let alone things we did _in_ those places.”

“But we _do_ have a number of vintage video cameras courtesy of Ebay and one seller named Geoduck99.”

Aziraphale finishes what is probably his seventh glass of wine and Crowley is stung with envy. The angel has been carefully guarding his alcohol consumption so as not to have a ‘reenactment’ of the previous night’s regurgitations.

“When are they arriving then?” Aziraphale asks.

Crowley opens his phone and scrolls through his email.

“Two days,” he says. And then it hits him.

The blood seems to run out of his face. His stomach clenches.

That feeling of someone standing with a foot over his throat intensifies. His windpipe tightens.

He has been trying valiantly to ignore the persistent thought that they are not, in fact, just talking in the abstract. That in a very few number of hours indeed these ideas they have tossed about over this good wine and this salty carry-out food will be put into actual living practice.

He breathes through his panic.

Aziraphale looks at him oddly, as if seeing him for the first time.

Perhaps it is because he is gripping at the edges of the chair a bit too tight— his knuckles turning white— or because he is all together too quiet and probably too pale.

“We can use ‘safe word’ as a safe word,” Aziraphale says, and he looks sleepy and perhaps a bit worried, like he always does when he’s had too much to drink.

Crowley lifts one shoulder and drops his eyes down to the pattern of the parquet floor, tries to appear nonchalant.

“It’s whatever,” he mutters.

It is silent between them for a stretch, the first bit of it since they had started up a rousing argument over different brands of lubricant on the internet and the inherent advantages and disadvantages of purchasing an industrial sized bottle of the stuff from a third-party seller. It had quickly devolved into a crash-course on how bidding works on Ebay and then safe word use and safe word verbiage and now they are here— slung backwards into reality. Out of the abstract. Deafened by silence.

Crowley’s ears seem to swim with it, the quiet somehow more oppressive than Aziraphale monitoring his alcohol to water to food ratios. More oppressive than Aziraphale’s unceasing push for them to come up with a plan _tonight_.

“I didn’t mean--“ Aziraphale starts, stops, clears his throat. “I didn’t mean that you aren’t taking it seriously. Of course you are.”

Crowley straightens up a bit, feeling suddenly slovenly and unsure of himself, the comfort of their familiar banter vanishing into the solidly realistic threat of what will happen to him if they don’t pull this off.

“No,” he disagrees. “I’m not.” And lets his head hang down.

“Okay,” he chokes out, not looking up. “The list. Get your pen ready.”

Aziraphale says nothing but Crowley can feel him moving aside the balled up paper napkins on the table, searching for his writing utensil.

He inhales and can feel his ears burning.

“I mentioned my—“ His throat closes up around the words and he chokes his way through it. “My desk chair. Being… attended to on it.”

There is the dutiful scribbling of Aziraphale’s neat penmanship on paper, a noticeable lack of judgement.

He looks up to see Aziraphale staring back at him expectantly, face carefully blank, as if they are discussing which flowers to plant in the bookshop window boxes.

“And the car,” he manages. “The Bentley. The backseat.”

Another moment of pen scratching on paper. Crowley can see Aziraphale’s elegant scrawl and he stares at the careful loops of it upside down.

“Go on,” Aziraphale says softly.

Crowley inhales and steels his nerves, aware all at once at how callously he had talked about his best friend to any number of faceless and forgettable demons in Hell.

“Here,” he says, “on the couch. By the register. Also,” he pauses and turns his head and flexes his jaw. “On your desk.”

There is not, he realizes, even the faintest hint of disgust on Aziraphale’s face as he slowly and carefully outlines the list of places Crowley had once detailed having sex with him on.

“Okay so we have quite a few settings,” He says gently. “Were there any particular acts you had mentioned?”

Aziraphale’s notepads are miraculously free of doodles and Crowley daydreams of what he would be drawing if that legal pad were in his hands. Any number of satanic sigils, he thinks, maybe a few dicks.

“You—“ He clears his throat and looks up at the ceiling, then down at the floor, his neck feels suddenly too exposed for what he is about to say. “You,” he just settles on, and nods at the end of the sofa. “Bent over that. With my tongue in you,” he finishes softly.

Aziraphale looks over to the rounded arm of the sofa he is sitting on and then studiously back to his legal pad, where he jots down the appropriate note. The tips of his ears and the heights of his cheeks are a bright pink but he otherwise does not react.

“Anything else you can think of?”

“Alcohol,” Crowley blurts out, and can feel his face heat. “And dessert. Sucked off of various—“ his throat closes off and he coughs into his fist, “—parts of you.”

Aziraphale marks it down and then looks up at him, his lips twisting a bit in a curious smile that he seems incapable of reigning in.

“It was New Years, okay?” He scratches a hand across the back of his neck.

He looks up and Aziraphale is no longer staring at him, resigned instead to filling in the little bubbles of the bulleted list of sex acts with a bit more attention than Crowley really thinks necessary.

He notices then that the angel’s cheeks are flushed, his pulse is visible on his neck.

“I definitely—“ he bites off his sentence and scrubs a hand into his face, emboldened by Aziraphale’s sudden coyness and altogether broad-minded attitude. “Said something about making you scream. Probably some bullshit about my— fuck, I don’t know, sexual prowess.”

There is a very tiny huff of breath that Crowley would have ignored had he not known Aziraphale for six thousand years.

“Something funny, angel?” He jabs, desperately seeking a bit of levity.

Aziraphale stops filling in those circles and looks up at him.

“Did you say anything about the reverse of that statement?” He asks innocently.

“What, you making _me_ scream?”

Aziraphale nods demurely.

Crowley’s mouth goes suddenly dry.

“I… I can’t say I did.”

“Good,” Aziraphale responds, brushing a hand across his list and peering down at it studiously. “Nothing we’ll have to side-step around then.”

Crowley’s mind fills itself with the vague and mildly threatening idea of what Aziraphale could do to him to make him scream. He is a demon of Hell, after all— he had been boiled alive for a few hundred years in sulphur and tortured in any number of cruel and unusual ways. Screaming, as it were, is something that had been trained out of him.

But then he watches Aziraphale worry at his lip as he appraises the list he has created and considers that it might be a whole lot easier to contain screaming when gargling boiling sulphur than it would be if Aziraphale got those lips anywhere near him.

He closes his eyes and wishes desperately that his sunglasses were not hidden beneath the pile of rubbish on the table.

He opens them again and swallows, tries out his voice.

“I can’t— I can’t quite remember anything else just now,” he says, and a yawn rises up out of him, exhaustion creeping out.

“You’re welcome to stay here,” Aziraphale is saying, and begins straightening up the table. “If you’d like.”

It is a pleasant thought— to curl up on that sofa that Aziraphale has been sitting on all night, to soak in the warmth left behind by his thighs. He would fall asleep— like he had many times before— listening to the careful noises of an angel puttering about around him, orbiting from a safe and platonic distance. And then in the morning, he knows, he would wake up to the smell of pastries from the bakery down the street, the smell of the coffee Aziraphale was incapable of making correctly. Always too strong. Always burnt. Always ameliorated with too much sugar and nearly white with cream.

Crowley always drank it all anyway.

“Nah,” he says, against every instinct in him. “I should get home.”

He needs to shower and he needs to leave Aziraphale alone, to get out of the angel’s fussily curated life that he is continually mucking up.

“Of course,” Aziraphale murmurs, and Crowley tries not to imagine that there is a thread of disappointment there. “Just an offer.”

He doesn’t know how to end this. How to walk out of his door and then ever come back in it. As if he hasn’t sullied this pristine place of comfort with his always running mouth.

“I’ll shift things around in here,” Aziraphale says. “For when the cameras arrive. Friday.”

 _Friday_.

The word hangs in the air and suffocates him, lands squarely across his throat.

“That’s— that’s when we’re doing this then?”

“If that’s agreeable to you,” Aziraphale says. “I’m not sure— Did Hell give you a timeline of when they are expecting these tapes?”

“Not— not exactly,” Crowley says, and thinks that perhaps the increasingly human body he is wearing is all the timeline he needs.

Aziraphale is staring out at the till in his darkened bookshop, the shelves nearly blue and dripping with abstract shadows. Crowley realizes that he cannot quite see as well into them as before and a thread of panic weaves through him at the realization.

“This is okay, right?” He bites out, and then wishes he hadn’t.

Aziraphale looks over at him dreamily, appearing tired and soft and maybe a bit sad.

“Of course it is,” he says, clearly catching his meaning, seeing perhaps the panic in his eyes. “This won’t change anything.”

Crowley nods and swallows and hopes, desperately— even if it stings— that he’s right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this literally is about to go off the fuckin' rails and I'm sorry.
> 
> also all my chapter titles are dumb film production slang because I'm insufferable. _sides_ are pint-sized scripts that only contain the scenes on deck for that day's shooting.


	4. first positions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is a big boi
> 
> also: going to put out a broad content warning for the rest of this story: I'm going to write about potentially weird, very imperfect, definitively _not_ porn-perfect sex. if you are looking for the kind of smut that is... neat and not messy this probably won't be the place for it. I'll content warn for more specific stuff if and when I get to those points. But yeah, just a heads up!

The foam around the microphone has deteriorated. The scratches on the body veer sharply past just _cosmetic_.

But they are now the proud owners of a working Sony Betamovie camcorder and a Panasonic VHS recorder and Aziraphale, for all he knows absolutely nothing about technology, looks strangely paternal.

“We just… bought these on the internet. And now they’re _here_.”

He touches them reverently.

“Welcome to the 21st century, angel,” Crowley mutters, and helps lift them out of the box.

The Panasonic is a massive thing, and Crowley hopes that if it has a zoom capability that it isn’t very good.

“Oh, this one is just darling,” Aziraphale is saying, cradling the Betamovie in his hands as if it is a tiny baby bird.

“It’s a camera not an animal,” Crowley says, and unboxes the tripod.

“Do we name them?” He asks.

Crowley eyes him skeptically.

“No, Aziraphale,” he says. “We don’t name them.”

The tide of realization crests again, just a bit, and he feels that familiar wave of panic.

Aziraphale is still holding the Betamovie to his chest, walking with it around the backroom and peering through its tiny viewfinder. He is pointing it at the sofa, the length of which has been slid backwards to allow for a prairie of space between the future location of the tripod and the future location of _them_ , the subjects.

Crowley swallows.

“Is the lighting good?” Aziraphale asks, and squints over at the windows, at the sunlight streaming in.

“It’s a bit bright,” Crowley calls up from the floor, wishing that it were night, dark, nuclear winter even— anything to hide what might be the most mortifying moment of his life that he is rapidly hurtling towards.

Aziraphale snaps his fingers and pulls down a miracle— the windows suddenly darkened and the light suddenly dim.

Something in Crowley’s chest aches at the motion, remembering what it had felt like to wield such an ability. He wonders wildly if he’ll ever be able to do it again.

“Better?”

“Better,” he says, and stands.

Aziraphale hefts the camcorder up to sight level and stares at it.

“Why does the name Betamax sound familiar?” He muses, reading the label on the side.

“No clue,” Crowley mutters, locking the tripod legs into place.

Aziraphale makes a small noise of curiosity and puts it back in its shipping box.

“Oh,” Aziraphale says. “Crowley.”

“Hm?”

He does not allow himself for a second to think about anything other than fixing the camera in place, other than putting one foot directly in front of the other. _Don’t look up._

“Your hair—“

Crowley turns to glance at him.

“It was a bit longer then,” he says.

Crowley straightens up. Feels his shoulders drop.

“Shit.”

He has not cut it since before Armageddon but it is nothing like it had been then— long enough to pull back into a bun on the top and still have pieces brushing his shoulders.

“I’m sure they won’t notice—“ he starts honestly, doubting that anyone in his former head office ever took a long enough look at his physical corporation other than to sneer at the cologne he wore to desperately hide the fumes of Hell.

“Wait,” Aziraphale says, eyes going wide, and disappears over to his register.

“Do you keep wigs in there?” He calls after, not entirely understanding why Aziraphale is currently digging through the drawer beneath the till.

“Ah!” He calls, and strides over with, Crowley realizes, a hair elastic.

“Where the bloody hell did you get that from?”

“From _you_. Circa 1997.”

Crowley stares at him, dead-eyed.

“You mean to tell me that you have kept a twenty-three year old hair elastic in your front desk?”

“You left it here,” Aziraphale insists, as if Crowley had purposefully been marking his territory with it. “You left quite a few of them here, actually. But that’s besides the point, come here.”

But Crowley doesn’t have to move because Aziraphale is stepping up close to him anyway, circling behind him and lifting his arms with his fingers outstretched and—

 _Oh_.

Aziraphale’s hands are in his hair, inadvertently touching his ears as he gathers the long strands back into what is probably the world’s smallest man-bun.

He can’t breathe.

“I— I could’ve done this,” he manages, but it comes out of his throat sounding breathless and pathetic and like he probably isn’t capable of doing much of anything.

“Yes but I’m aware of what your head looks like from angles you don’t,” Aziraphale says distractedly, fingers smoothing back his hair and Crowley doesn’t know if he has ever stood so still in his entire life, his heartbeat the only movement he’s currently capable of.

“This is more difficult than you ever made it look,” he murmurs, and Crowley is oddly grateful for that fact— for the multiple tries it takes him to tame back the unruly wave of his hair, heat blooming across his skin and this must be heaven, he thinks, his version of it anyway.

“It isn’t _quite_ the same as you wore it then but it’s rather close,” Aziraphale says, stepping back to admire his work. “Just less… voluminous.”

“Thanks,” he murmurs.

“We’ll have to cut it later,” Aziraphale remarks distractedly, looking at some indefinable point by his left ear, then leaning forward and tucking an errant curl behind it. Crowley’s breath hitches, his stomach flips. “As we fake it to modern day.”

Crowley realizes with a start that his ability to change hairstyles with a mere snap of his fingers has definitely left him as well.

“Yeah,” he breathes, and finds that his throat is so tight he can barely speak. “Good call.”

“Right,” Aziraphale says, stepping back a bit and looking him up and down, a flush blooming on his cheeks. “Are you ready to— to get the show on the road then?”

And he is, of course he is— he had showered twice this morning, once as soon as he woke up and then again just before coming over, convinced he stunk of the stress-sweat just from eating breakfast and ruminating over what they were about to do together. He had scrubbed every inch of himself in the shower _both_ times with a vitriol that left his skin pink and rubbed raw and he had trimmed and perfumed every last hair on his body until it reached an acceptable level of decency— something to announce that he is the type of demon who groomed for his lovers but also didn’t necessarily need to on account of his effortless and abundant sex appeal.

On paper he is ready. Yes.

In reality… less so.

“Yes,” he says anyway, despite the furious suck of his heart in his chest, the pounding of it behind his ribs. “Of course. Show on the road.”

He looks back over at the Panasonic that is sitting idly on its tripod, facing the couch with a kind of stalwart judgement. He has the errant thought that it looks like something off the set of _Videodrome_ and he feels faintly unnerved by it. Reminded perhaps of the regular amounts of body-horror he has been facing in his own daily life—suddenly functional digestive systems, eyes that could no longer see beneath sunglasses in dark rooms, stomachs that do not tolerate dairy, legs that cramp if he doesn’t stretch them enough.

It is dim enough, in fact, for the room to have what might be called _mood lighting_ and if he tries he can hear the motoring of cars outside on the street, the occasional cooing of a pigeon. He pulls off his sunglasses and realizes how much more he can actually see.

“Okay should we— do you want to pick something off the list or—“

Aziraphale, for all his bravado and unruffled feathers the other night, now looks rather flushed about his cheeks, stumbling a bit more than usual on his words.

“Whatever you want,” Crowley says breathlessly, honestly. “Whatever—“ he swallows and tries again, “whatever will be— agreeable to you. I’m just,” he pauses and blinks and there’s something apparently in his eye, “grateful you’re even doing this.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale starts, brushing his hands down his waistcoat and studiously not looking at him. “None of that, now. This is— This is your _life_ we’re talking about.”

He feels a bit lightheaded, pulse pounding in his ears and there’s the stress-sweat again, starting up across his chest, under his armpits. He wonders whether Aziraphale would let him shower again before they commence.

“Uhm, we could start with just— kissing?” Aziraphale offers, looking down at the legal pad list he had made the other night as if _kissing_ _on the lips_ is anywhere even remotely on it.

 _Kissing_ , Crowley thinks, and something in his brain short-circuits.

He has run through the scenarios of them making pornography together enough times that he has gradually begun to dull himself to the thrill of them. He had considered— _for science_ — what it would be like to lick between Aziraphale’s legs with a great and often embarrassing amount of detail in the name of desensitizing himself.

But he had never considered that they would actually kiss. On the mouth. Not between the legs.

He immediately wonders when the last time he smoked a cigarette was and whether or not it is still apparent on his breath. He wishes he had a mint. Wonders when the last time he’d flossed.

“Are you alright, dear?”

Crowley blinks and drags himself out of his reverie, swallowing down the tightness in his throat in time to see Aziraphale in front of him— nervously wringing his hands together.

“ _Kissing_ ,” he repeats. “Yes. Of course. We should start with that.”

“Oh good,” Aziraphale looks relieved, strangely, as if Crowley had just absolved his worries. “And then perhaps,” Aziraphale looks down at the list on the table next to him, chews at his lip. “Perhaps oral sex?”

“Oral sex,” he repeats, and wonders when the octave of his voice ever got so high. “Yes, oral sex is fine. Good. Great even.” He bites down on the meat of his cheek to stop talking.

“Excellent,” Aziraphale says, with what appears to be a false set of confidence. “Well I’m— I’m as ready as I’ll ever be so—“

Crowley watches as he straightens his bow tie, as if it isn’t about to get pulled off in a few minutes. And then he steps over to adjust the camera, pointing it directly at the sofa.

“The red button, right?” He asks, and is leaning down to peer through the viewfinder.

His head swims.

“Yeah,” he manages. “The red button. Push the tape in.”

There’s the plastic _click_ of the tape slid into place and then a comforting sort of whirling noise as the camera rolls.

It feels all together too hot in this room, too stuffy. He glances toward the front door where the shade cloth has been pulled tightly down and can read the words _closed_ through it.

“Angel,” he breathes, feeling suddenly weak, sick, nauseous.

He is lightheaded— perpetually out of breath. He looks back and Aziraphale is behind the camera still, fidgeting with the aim of it at that bit of sofa they have sat on for decades, spilling wine and spilling secrets.

In a manner of minutes, Crowley realizes, they are about to spill much more than wine.

He grips onto the arm of a chair to steady himself, tries to breathe slowly. He runs down the mental checklist he has formulated for himself every morning to keep up with his increasingly mortal corporation: brush teeth, shower, eat breakfast, drink three cups of coffee with varying levels of sugar, drink water, eat more food, attempt to use home bathroom facilities before leaving flat, eat again, drink more water.

He considers that he had eaten breakfast and had consumed his coffee but he had not eaten his second or third breakfast and perhaps this is just another case of what Aziraphale charmingly calls _the screaming weakies_.

“Angel,” he says again, louder, because he is panicking and the room is spinning and every part of him is screaming to stop.

“Crowley, what is it?”

The camera stops whirring. Then there are careful hands on his arm, over the bicep, steering him to sit down in the chair he has been leaning on.

“Fucking hell,” he just breathes, and closes his eyes.

He wants to lean his head into Aziraphale’s stomach, let him thread his fingers back through his hair.

“There now. It’s alright. Just— just breathe,” Aziraphale murmurs, and kneels in front of him.

“This is— this is going to be—“

Crowley reaches out and holds onto the edge of the armchair, curls his fingers into the fabric. He is sweating and trembling and there is a fine vibrating shake to his left hand that won’t stop.

Aziraphale’s hand comes up and hovers between them for a moment, as if to rest on top of his hand— but then the movement gets shuttered, pulled carefully away.

He nearly laughs— six-thousand years and Aziraphale is still uncertain of where to touch him, if such a thing is even permitted. And it hadn’t been— not for so long— not for Aziraphale anyway. And now somehow they are supposed to shelve those finely honed instincts and those hard-wired survival habits and jump into bed together.

“This is a disaster,” he mumbles, and closes his eyes.

“It’s going to be fine,” Aziraphale says.

“We don’t have to do this,” Crowley says, perhaps a bit frantic, eyes still closed. “We can… hire body doubles or something. We can fake it with camera angles. Tell them the tapes got lost in Y2K.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale says, and Crowley peels apart his eyes, turns to look into the face of his friend.

His own history looks back at him.

“Do you not want to do this?” He says softly.

Crowley chokes out an anxious laugh, tries to find his voice somewhere in his throat.

“I don’t know,” he answers truthfully, because he isn’t sure how to say that he has dreamed about a scenario like this for the last few hundred years but now, in the reality of the moment, finds it to be impossibly abhorrent.

He isn’t sure how to say that he doesn’t want their first time to be fake and filmed and filed off down to Hell, for any number of demons to watch and jerk off to. He isn’t sure how to say that he had wished for a first time with a sort of pathological single-mindedness for centuries and that now that it’s here it feels sullied. Torn from them.

Aziraphale is only doing this, he knows, on account of saving his life. Aziraphale is only doing it in friendly restitution for all the times Crowley had snapped his fingers and released him from literal chains.

He feels stripped apart, laid bare.

“I will never force you to do anything,” Aziraphale says quietly, and Crowley can see his throat move as he swallows, again and again. “ _Never_.”

He wants to say that it feels a lot like the inverse— like Crowley is forcing _him_.

“Me neither,” he mumbles, staring down at his hand on the chair and the shape of the fabric underneath.

“But I don’t know— I’m not sure how—“

He looks up and can see Aziraphale worrying at his lip, eyes shielded by the blond of his thick eyelashes. There are a few pure white ones mixed in, Crowley realizes, and he wants desperately to drag his thumb across them.

“I don’t know how else to save you,” he finishes softly.

The air feels punched out of his chest and he is reminded, all at once, that the stakes could literally not be higher.

And he is here, having a panic attack on a wing-chair and looking the prettiest gift horse right in its lovely, even-toothed mouth.

He wants to slap himself.

“I don’t either,” he manages, and closes his eyes again, waves his other hand in frustration. “M’sorry. I don’t know what— what came over me.”

His throat is doing that rather inconvenient tightening thing again.

“Maybe I just— fuck, I don’t know, didn’t eat enough. Still not used to,” he swallows and opens his eyes and gestures again at nothing, “having to _eat_ ,” he finishes lamely, his excuse transparent.

“It’s okay to be nervous,” Aziraphale says softly, and the hand that had been hovering rises again to rest gently on his knee. The heat of it sinks down into Crowley’s bones. “I am too.”

Crowley stares down at those meticulous nail beds, those pink half-moons just before the cuticle.

“But we’ll be okay,” Aziraphale continues. “It’s just sex. It’s just— it’s just bodies fitting together.”

“Not very ecclesiastical of you,” Crowley mutters.

Aziraphale sucks at his teeth.

“That’s all humanity’s idea,” he says.

The thumb rubs a small circle against him and Crowley can feel his throat relaxing, his breath evening out.

“And need I remind you that you wore my _skin_ not too long ago.”

Crowley looks up at his face, scratches at the back of his own head to feel where Aziraphale had pulled back his hair.

“Yeah,” he breathes. “I did.”

“And I trust you didn’t take a peek,” Aziraphale says, but there’s that light in his eye that is clearly teasing.

Crowley tongues his incisor.

“Of course not.”

The thumb stops rubbing and Aziraphale looks surprisingly impish.

“Wait,” Crowley starts, eyes blowing wide. “Did _you_?”

Aziraphale looks shocked that he would even imply such a thing.

“Of course not,” he says primly. “I’m an _angel_.”

“A bastard too though,” he mumbles.

A pale eyebrow lifts along with the corner of that clever mouth, as if he is not too upset about the label.

“I’ll just remind you that—“ Aziraphale is a lovely shade of pink up along his cheeks, “—that it doesn’t get much more intimate than literally wearing each other’s skin.”

“You even stripped me down to get in the bath,” Crowley remarks. “Completely unnecessary that was.”

“I _left_ the underthings on,” Aziraphale retorts, looking prim and altogether too put together for this conversation.

Crowley makes a noise in his throat and there is just a bit of sunlight hitting Aziraphale’s curls. They are impossibly white.

“We’ll be okay,” Aziraphale says softly. “It’s just _us_.”

Crowley glances over to the empty room, the ancient camera and the ancient tripod.

“It’s just us,” he repeats, and tries to let that sink in. “And it won’t make things weird?”

Aziraphale smiles and picks an errant piece of lint of off Crowley’s knee.

“Not a chance.”

“Promise?”

Aziraphale up this close is a masterwork in softness— watercolor eyes and pale eyebrows and soft circles for a chin, for cheeks. Crowley looks at the tip of that clever little nose and feels something like carbonation bubbling in the pit of his stomach.

“I promise,” he says, and Crowley stares at his mouth as he says it.

He licks his lips and Crowley gets a bit lost in the motion of it, at the slide of wetness that is left behind.

“Are you ready, dear?” He is asking. “There’s no rush but—“ He looks down at Crowley’s hands. “—Perhaps we should get started?”

“Sure,” he says, and tries to find his voice. “Get started. Yes.”

Aziraphale taps once on his knee and then rises up to his feet, holds a hand out to help him up.

And then he is back behind the camera, that familiar whirring sound starting up again. It suddenly feels like there is another person in the room, as if the camera is a sentient object, watching them.

And it _is_ , a bit— because he knows at some point they will ship whatever horror show ends up on that tape down to Hell in a bid for his immortality back. That an unspecified number of occult beings will view it.

He swallows, tries to breathe.

It feels as though there are thumb tacks against his lungs— each inhale painful and prickling and it’s fear, he knows. Fear that what they are about to do will forever tarnish them, will forever ruin the otherwise unfettered six-thousand year run of friendship that he has so carefully maintained.

Aziraphale walks in front of the camera as if he’s fine with it— all of it— completely unaware that the machine in front of him is the viewfinder to Hell.

“Come here,” Aziraphale says, but it sounds different than his usual voice, lower pitched, _suggestive_.

And Crowley finds that his legs obey despite his nerves singing with anxiety.

“That’s it,” he says, as if Crowley is a horse, an animal— something that might get spooked and run off. His knees go weak at the timbre of his voice— his mind flipping along with his stomach. He wonders if Aziraphale has ever done this before, at what his other lovers were like.

Something else knots up in his stomach next to the anxiety and next to the fear, something that looks a lot like jealousy.

“Yes, come here.”

Aziraphale is breathy and seductive and his skin looks different in this low light, his eyelashes shade over his irises.

His legs work, slowly, and step through the suddenly liquid texture of the room, his heartbeat too loud in his ears. Before he knows it Aziraphale is in arm’s reach, soft and nearly glowing at the edges.

“Hello,” he says, as if he is seeing Crowley for the first time.

“Hi,” Crowley breathes back, aware of how naked he feels and it suddenly dawns on him that he will have to get his fear under some semblance of control if he wishes to have an erection in the foreseeable future.

The idea that he might not be able to get hard layers on top of the already sticky horror of the camera watching them, of Aziraphale being forced to do this. And he doesn’t have magic, have a miracle. There is no viagra in his fingertips he can snap and pump into his veins.

“You should probably kiss me,” Aziraphale breathes softly, and Crowley realizes that the angel is staring at his mouth.

Crowley nods and swallows and is suddenly confronted with the terrifying and vast distance of space between them— ten whole inches and six-thousand years. He had always found Aziraphale to be beautiful— and not in that way that all angels were meant to be beautiful— with their ethereal grace and soft edges. No, Aziraphale is beautiful in conjunction with those things— a track that doesn’t stop at _grace_ and transcends instead into _kind_ and _gentle_ and then further until it morphs into something solid and immoveable. A radical, unresisting sweetness layered over top of a fine edge of _bastard_.

His eyes are nearly green up this close, and the upturned tip of his nose makes the edges of Crowley’s teeth ache with the desire to bite it.

He looks from mouth to eyes to mouth again, leans slowly in.

He isn’t sure what he thought it would be like— he isn’t sure if he ever had a preconceived notion of what their first kiss would feel like, taste like. He isn’t sure if he’d ever considered how Aziraphale’s nose would slot into place next to his, push into the cradle of his cheek. He isn’t sure if he had ever really thought about the unerring softness of his bottom lip, if he had ever considered how dull the top edge of those even white teeth would be.

He probably stinks of anxiety and cigarettes and he hates all at once how his hands are already helplessly in Aziraphale’s hair, fisting too tight.

Their bodies press together out of some sort of animal instinct, a hunger for closeness. And he is shocked at how natural it feels, how _good_ it feels— the angel’s hips pressing up close to his and there is already the swiftly hardening outline of angelic cock through his trousers.

Crowley swallows, pulls back, glances breathlessly down.

Aziraphale’s exhalations puff out against his cheek and Crowley looks back up into his eyes, amazed and curious and he wonders if the angel pulled down a miracle for such arousal when he wasn’t looking.

He catches Aziraphale glancing down at his own legs, where by all means there _should_ be a matching outline but there isn’t.

“You ok?” Aziraphale whispers between them, and Crowley has no good answer for it so he just kisses him again, threads his hands up to cup around his jaw.

A sound comes out of the angel’s mouth and straight into his— the sound he makes when he has just taken a bite of very good food after a very long day and Crowley swallows it down, _drinks_ it— squeezes his hand a little harder up into those curls, wrapped up in the dizzying notion that he is kissing him. _Actually kissing him_.

He tries to forget about his uncooperative dick.

Aziraphale’s neck tilts back, just a bit— and Crowley can suddenly get inside his mouth, lick around his teeth and lick against his tongue, tug at the rapidly swelling bottom lip with his fangs.

“Crowley—“ he gasps out his name and rolls his head to the side to look out into the corner of the room.

“What’re you—“ Crowley pulls back enough to nip at his jaw and then catches the sight of the camera out of the edge of his vision. “ _Oh_.”

It’s a show, he tells himself, it’s all a show.

Aziraphale would never be this soft and pliant in front of him. Aziraphale would never let him tug this roughly at his bow-tie, rip open the top buttons on his shirt. It is only, Crowley thinks, because of that camera that he is letting him do this to him at all.

Something in his chest aches.

“Tell me what to do,” Aziraphale whispers, just so he can hear. “Tell the camera what you’re going to do.”

“How the fuck should I know what to do?” Crowley whispers back, sweating and nervous and he shouldn’t be so fragile, he shouldn’t be so fucking _weak_.

“Make something up!” Aziraphale says hotly, under his breath.

“Jesus _Christ_ ,” he murmurs, and then louder, “on the sofa, angel.”

Aziraphale backs up until his legs hit the leather and he sinks down onto it.

His knees are slightly open and his arms are down by his side, looking up at him with wide, expectant eyes.

“Spread,” Crowley says, because he thinks he heard that in a porno once.

Aziraphale levels him with an unamused eye and a twitch of his brow but parts his legs anyway, allowing him to kneel between them, to palm the jut of his knees.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale whispers, “you haven’t taken my clothes off yet.”

Crowley glances up at him from between his spread thighs. The clothes are still _mostly_ on— the trousers and the shirt and the bow-tie. It’s loosened though— and Crowley can see the soft pulse of Aziraphale’s heartbeat underneath the mussed fabric at the base of his throat. He has a sudden desire to suck on it.

“Keep them on,” he says, and it’s something like a growl.

He feels all at once possessive and protective of Aziraphale’s soft stretches of skin. The thought of demons, of _Hell,_ seeing it— even through the shitty lens of an ancient VHS tape— is enough to coil up a well of jealousy in the pit of his stomach until he feels nauseous with it.

This is _his_ mess— _his_ — and Aziraphale is an angel already, yes, but also one for helping him through it, for volunteering to help fix this.

And he isn’t about to let anyone see those curves he’s chanced glances at for the last six-thousand years, the swell of his hip that he often touched in his dreams. No, he thinks, you have to _earn_ the sight of those curves, that softness— earn it through a strictly platonic friendship and a desire that you keep buttoned down and out of sight. Earn it through six-thousand years of dinner dates and countless wine-drunk evenings, through crucifixions and biblical plagues, through bad oysters and the Blitz.

He runs his hands flat-palmed up Aziraphale’s thighs, to the fly of his trousers. He is distantly aware of soft moans coming out of Aziraphale’s throat, of the angel’s hands threading delicatelyaround his ears, petting at the back of his neck.

He gets to the zipper and stops, chances a glance up at Aziraphale’s face.

He’s looking down at him— all soft curls and flushed pink skin and that bottom lip is still swollen where Crowley had bitten it. Those gray eyes are wide staring down at him and there is only the smallest of nods before the button goes— and then the zipper— Crowley holding his eye contact as he dips a hand inside and pulls his cock free.

He’s amazingly, perfectly hard. And velvety hot and _thick_ and Crowley has a thread of anxiety again thinking of his own anatomy that seems hellbent on crawling up inside of himself instead.

Aziraphale’s eyelids are fluttering and nearly closing and Crowley can see him fight to keep them open— to hold him in his gaze in reassurance as his heart pounds too loud in his ears.

 _It’s just us_ , he reminds himself.

He looks down at him, _finally_ , breaking their sustained eye contact— to see liquid beading at the tip, the whole thing flushed pink and swollen and perfect.

“Holy fuck,” he breathes.

There is a road map of blue veins pulsing underneath the skin and Crowley has a sudden desire to have them in his mouth— to trace their journeys and find their destinations.

He licks his lips and is about to taste the pearls of liquid on the end of him, about to suck him into his mouth when he stops, looks up.

Aziraphale is holding himself quite still, the tendons standing out along his neck, his jaw.

“You okay?” Crowley says softly, just loud enough for him to hear.

Aziraphale is panting into the space between them, eyes glassy and wide and wet— disbelieving and uncertain.

“Yes,” he whispers, in between breaths, “ _yes_. Are _you_?”

Crowley looks down at the triangle of exposed Aziraphale beneath his trousers— can see the curls of dark blonde hair, the pink skin, the tremble of his belly as it breathes around anticipation.

“Hell yes,” he murmurs, and then takes him into his mouth.

Aziraphale moans like it’s being pulled out of him, the hand around his neck digging in and the other fisting against the sofa, curling up in the blanket there.

Crowley isn’t sure what he thought he’d taste like— similar to himself maybe— salt and sharp— but he doesn’t, not quite, and as he swallows and as Aziraphale pushes into his mouth the word _good_ springs to mind.

Good, he thinks, he tastes _good_ and he sounds _good_ and who would have thought that sucking off the angel would _feel_ so good— with all of the moral weight to that word wrapped up in it.

He curls a fist around the base of him, sinks down until he brushes the back of his throat.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale gasps, perhaps not expecting that Crowley’s increasingly mortal body could take a cock down quite that far.

He moans around it, something like pride welling up in his chest as he pulls back, pushes down.

His jaw aches, his knees hurt, it’s _wonderfu_ l.

Aziraphale is making soft whimpering sounds that he files away for later, something to cling to at night when he is alone and more importantly lonely. And then he’s rolling his hips, pushing up into Crowley’s mouth with tiny, half-aborted movements, the hand on his neck stroking and loving and if he closes his eyes he can almost believe the camera is gone— that this is real, Aziraphale loves him. They’re lovers. 

“Oh, _Crowley_ , yes— _don’t stop_ —“

He moans around the length in his mouth, swallowing and hoping he’s doing it right— making it okay— and then that hand in his hair is suddenly urgent.

“Crowley— _Crowley_.”

It sounds like a warning, perhaps, or a beg for permission.

He leans into it, nose butting nearly into the zipper of his trousers and swallowing in preemptive thirst.

“Oh, _yes_ , _darling_ —“

His muscles squeeze tight, and there is an aching moment of suspension before a sudden explosion of heat— and then Aziraphale is coming in his mouth, down his throat with something like a whine, and that, Crowley thinks, is _very_ good too.

He pulls Aziraphale from his mouth and looks up from between his knees, tucks him carefully back into his clothes.

The angel’s eyes aren’t quite focusing, his chest heaving— and Crowley has a moment of pride at the sight, at the flushed skin, the line of sweat along his forehead.

 _I did that_ , he thinks _,_ in amazed wonderment.

“Now you,” Aziraphale says breathily, sitting upright and patting the couch next to him. “Come let me service you.”

As if he’s a car, an engine, a machine— something to be taken care of and handled by a professional.

He gets up from his knees and slides onto to the couch next to him, shoots a nervous glance to the camera and then down between his legs. There’s something there— a hardness from Aziraphale’s breathy noises of pleasure that are quickly diminishing the more time he spends thinking of the camera.

“How does a demon like to be worshiped?”

Aziraphale is pulling at his left leg, tugging it up along the couch and pushing him back against the arm rest.

It takes approximately thirty seconds for those words he’s spoken to get parsed out in Crowley’s head— enough time for his brain to stop working entirely as Aziraphale nestles in between his thighs, one leg still on the floor.

He is looking up at him with something like _hunger_ in his eyes— like _thirst_ — and those manicured fingers are suddenly on the fly of his trousers, tugging.

And then they stop. Feeling, perhaps, the suspect lack of hardness beneath his hands. He puts a delicate palm over the line of him in his trousers, squeezes gently.

Crowley’s eyes slip closed, his mouth drops open and tries to suck in air.

The embarrassment compounds itself, layers itself, extends itself exponentially. He can feel the sofa move as Aziraphale shifts on top of it, and then he encounters a sudden lapful of angel.

His eyes snap open and there is Aziraphale leaning over him, laying across him, pressing gentle kisses up into the side of his neck, by his jaw and— Crowley realizes— effectively shielding his unaroused self from the camera.

Aziraphale moans loudly, as if for the purposes of the tape, and then presses a small kiss beneath his ear.

“Just close your eyes,” he whispers, and there is suddenly a hand between them, cupping over his cock through his clothes. “It’s okay. It’s just me,” he murmurs. “I’ll make it feel good.”

He can’t see the camera like this— not with Aziraphale pressed against him and whispering in his ear and it feels again, almost, like it’s just them, _he loves me_.

Crowley let’s his shoulders drop, feels the tension ease out as he relaxes into the sofa, arms coming up to cup around Aziraphale’s surprisingly strong back.

“That’s it,” Aziraphale is whispering softly, his hand working between his legs and coaxing something of an erection out of him. “Just relax.”

He moans particularly loud again, shimmying and wiggling and Crowley can feel the shift of muscle beneath his shirt.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, and closes his eyes again.

“Shh,” Aziraphale soothes him, and nips at his jaw. “You’re good, darling. You’re so good.”

 _Oh_.

Something lights on fire under his skin.

“S—Say that again,” he whispers desperately, feeling all at once a hot pulse of arousal flooding his veins.

“So good,” Aziraphale murmurs. “You’ll be good for me, won’t you?”

“Oh _fuck_.”

Aziraphale pulls back, glances down between them.

“Good boy,” he breathes.

His eyes slam closed, he arches back into the sofa, his cock suddenly hard and pressed uncomfortably down against his leg.

“ _Very_ good boy,” Aziraphale says appreciatively, and slides down the length of him.

Crowley swallows back the unease, the ache, the burn of stoked desire, and nods down at Aziraphale in encouragement.

“Tell me what you want,” Aziraphale breathes, and Crowley remembers, all at once— that Aziraphale is a _performer_.

All those stupid magic tricks, all those dance lessons. The angel likes to fucking _perform_.

 _Christ_ , he thinks, _he’s gonna kill me._

“Suck me?” He offers, and his voice sounds uncertain.

“Mm, _yes_.”

He has a thought that perhaps Aziraphale _had_ gotten a hold of some of those old VHS pornos, because the angel is shimmying and moaning and licking at his lips and Crowley wonders where he had ever learned such a thing from if not porn.

The zipper is _loud_ in his ears, and he can hear each tooth descending before Aziraphale is mimicking him from before— catching his gaze and holding it as he dips a hand inside, mouthing the word _good_ again.

And the feel of Aziraphale’s hand around him is electric, is _surreal_. He has held that hand with its square nail beds and filed short manicure, he had cleaned the knuckles of it when he scraped it against the stone walls of the Bastille. And there is something otherworldly about seeing it now— wrapping around his cock and pulling it through the fly of his jeans as if he has done it a million times, as if it is as unexceptional as breathing.

“Oh yes,” he is saying, _moaning_. “What a lovely effort you have made for me.”

“Christ,” Crowley bites out, and threads a hand up around the back of Aziraphale’s neck.

“For me?” He asks, and suddenly the angel is looking up at him, his bottom lip sucked between his teeth and a coy smile on his face. Ever so slowly, he _winks_.

And he doesn’t know what to do— what to think— because he has Aziraphale moaning and wiggling between his legs, his hand wrapped around Crowley’s cock, smiling and winking and being _ridiculous_ for the camera. He is not sure where the act starts and Aziraphale ends.

“Yeah,” Crowley breathes, because Aziraphale is apparently waiting for an answer, his lips hovering over the swollen head of his cock. “For you,” he says.

“Good,” Aziraphale says softly. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

And then he licks a stripe across the underside of him, up onto the tip, into the slit.

Crowley can’t see, can’t hear— forgets there is a camera in the room because Aziraphale’s mouth is as clever between his legs as it is over dinner and he had not considered the very real possibility that the angel would be _good_ at this.

His toes curl. His eyes roll back. He has half a moment of stuttering embarrassment at the sounds coming out of his throat and then swiftly forgets what shame is, what embarrassment is— because Aziraphale has dipped his free hand into his jeans and is cradling his balls there, tugging them down as orgasm licks with near immediacy up his spine.

They can’t crawl up— not with his hand holding them down, and there is a sweet edge of agony as he rolls his hips up into Aziraphale’s mouth, tries to moan out his frustration.

“Oh. Fucking _yes_ — Aziraphale— I might— _oh fuck_. I’m—“

Aziraphale moans in the affirmative and Crowley chances a look down— catches the sight of angelic cheeks sucking so hard they dipped inward, the lips swelling— and then he’s coming, shoulders hitching up to his ears and both hands cradling Aziraphale’s face. He’s probably thrusting too hard and probably coming too much but rational thought has left him, the abstract idea of the camera has left him— replaced with the knowledge that Aziraphale sucks cock as well as he sucks down cake.

Aziraphale pulls off of him, licks up a bit of the spilled ejaculate on his thumb, _moans_.

“Jesus fuck,” Crowley says eloquently.

“Was that good?” He asks, the very picture of innocence debauched. He tucks him carefully back into his trousers. 

Crowley thinks he’s nodding, or perhaps just staring— watching as Aziraphale closes his eyes and administers a thorough tongue-cleaning of his hand as if he were a cat.

“Yes,” he eventually coughs out. “Very good.”

“Good,” Aziraphale says, and sits back on his heels.

“I’m exhausted,” Crowley says, and leans back to stare up at the ceiling.

“You need _food_ ,” Aziraphale murmurs. “Stay here. I’ll turn off the camera.”

He pushes up and off the sofa. Crowley can hear a button being pressed, the whirling of the tape as if rewinding.

“I can order take-away again,” Aziraphale is calling from somewhere across the room, as if what they’d just done was unremarkable. Banal even.

There is a sudden and painful lump in Crowley’s throat, a burning behind his eyes.

“Sure,” he says, and his voice sounds foreign and unmusical. “Whatever you like best.”

He keeps staring at the ceiling and tries to blink away the odd stinging sensation in the corners of his eyes, the strange beat of his heart up so high in his throat.

“You won’t mind what I pick?” Aziraphale is calling, and Crowley can see him looking down at a paper take-away menu.

“Not at all,” Crowley says, because he will take whatever Aziraphale is willing to give him— no matter what it is— every time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first position refers to actors going back to their original marks in a scene, we usually call these "ones" but that would've lost the lovely double entendre of "position" in this context and I'm annoying myself right now.


	5. double exposure #1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so I think what I will do from here on is just have these tiny random lil interludes of Aziraphale POV for anyone who wants them. They won't ever be necessary to the plot really so if you want to read just the Crowley POVs you can skip all the chapters titled "double exposure" from here on out.

He is asleep on the sofa.

Curled up on his side and those long limbs are wrapped around a pillow, a blanket hitched high up to nearly his ears.

Aziraphale has been sitting across from him for a long while, sipping cocoa at damn-near midnight and trying to read but failing. He finds himself instead suddenly monitoring each inhale, each exhale— counting them like seconds on a clock— like grains of sand in a hourglass. Time once again feeling precious and non-renewable, like it did before Armageddon.

There are many things to be done still— books to shelve that have been sitting in their pallets on the floor, between rows, groceries to purchase, cobwebs in bathrooms to clean.

But Aziraphale finds that he cannot pull himself from his chair, cannot pull himself away from the barely lit vision of Crowley snoozing contentedly on his couch.

His hair is dull in this light, the sharp angles of his face softened. Every so often he snores rather loudly and nearly wakes himself up and Aziraphale can’t help that he smiles fondly at it, every time, the sound stretching open the places in his heart where Crowley already resides. 

Crowley has _always_ slept, ever since he had first discovered such a thing, and so the sight of such a human endeavor feels more comforting than alarming. It is a respite from all the other sudden human quirks he had developed that continually take Aziraphale off guard— the need for bathroom breaks, the alarming shade of _cranky_ he develops when he is hungry, the actual hangover Aziraphale had witnessed exactly _once_ and then promised himself to never allow again— wheedling Crowley to hydrate excessively any time he drinks any alcohol at all.

He blinks away that abrupt tightening in his throat, does not allow himself to panic over this, _not yet_.

And he’s good at swallowing it, the panic. He’s good at hiding his unease beneath layers of earnest toil, leveling his nose to the grindstone of tasks and not looking up at the prevailing chaos around him. This is no different, he reminds himself, than the Armageddon they had already avoided. Just a smaller one perhaps. A private one.

_Stay focused._

Crowley shifts uneasily on the sofa and Aziraphale can see his socked foot slide out from beneath the blanket, dangle precariously over the floor.

Crowley had told him once that he had planted the fear in humans of demons hiding beneath beds, ready to snatch at unsuspecting ankles and drag their mortal souls to Hell.

He had found it to be a rather distasteful joke then and an even worse one now— what with Hell currently taking Crowley apart piece by precious piece.

His heartbeat pulses strong in his throat and he stares into the darkness beneath his sofa, reasoning to himself that no demon (not even a lanky slip of one like his) could possibly hide in such a small space. And besides, Aziraphale is sure he’d be able to smell them, sense them.

_Still_ , he thinks, best to not take chances.

He hesitates, then puts his book aside and his tea aside and walks quietly over to Crowley’s snoozing body, kneels in front of him on the floor. He looks from ankle to face to ankle again and then reverently places his hands underneath those fine bones, lifting them back onto the couch. He wedges the edge of the blanket carefully underneath him, wrapping him up like a gift.

And he can see from this angle the messy, loosening gather of his hair, still pulled back from earlier. It looks, in Aziraphale’s inexpert opinion, to be uncomfortable— pulling a bit in places and it’s mussed now anyway— he might as well remove it, considering he _had_ placed it there to begin with.

Aziraphale lifts his hand. Pauses. His breathing is altogether too loud in this quiet room and he steels his nerves, comforted by the understanding that Crowley has always been a heavy sleeper.

So he threads his fingers into his hair, eases it out of the elastic. The copper waves hold their form for a moment and then slowly tumble down, shading across his ear, onto one high cheekbone.

Crowley’s breathing hitches for a moment, his eyelashes suddenly fluttering— and then they even out again, settle down. And Aziraphale’s hand moves before he can think about it, lifting again to tuck the nearly curling ends of Crowley’s hair back behind his ear, lingering on the silk of it.

Up this close he can see the light dusting of baby-blond fuzz along his ears, the beginning of red-gold scruff on his jaw. He isn’t sure if Crowley has ever actually shaved— he had always merely stroked his chin and then pulled his hand away to reveal a devilish goatee, a Van Dyke, a ridiculous mustache— on one occasion a full beard.

And all at once Aziraphale feels alarmed and protective. A rearing of his often buried angelic traits into full and breathless swing.

He desires, perhaps, to save Crowley— Crowley who had never taken to human culture apart from drinking and drug use and music, who had never even purchased his own clothes or physically washed his own hair or eaten much of human food— from the burden of these mortal whims, or at least to dampen the blow of them. To ease him gently into the horror of human bodies that demand unceasingly and unforgivingly.

He makes a mental note to leave early in the morning, at first light, before Crowley has woken up, and take himself down to the corner shop. To get a toothbrush, a razor, shaving cream, sunscreen, snacks that might appeal to a still mostly demonic stomach, beverages that might sneakily contain something green since Crowley seems intent on avoiding such things.

And he’ll lay the toiletries out along the bathroom sink in a quiet suggestion that he stay here, _please._ Move right in. Don’t go.

He’ll offer up tiny and mostly silent invitations to ask him for help, to let Crowley know that he has six-thousand years of immersive human living behind him and of course there’s no judgement. As if he could ever judge Crowley for what he is or what he needs.

To love unconditionally is an angelic trait, yes, but it’s never been easier than when it comes to loving Crowley.

And if that means holding his hair back as he vomits up £150 worth of alcohol so be it. If that means drool stains on all his pillows and copper hair clogging up his bathroom drain and having single-serving juice cartons on hand because Crowley’s metabolism runs faster than his mouth so be it.

To share with Crowley a deeply human life and to straddle this strange moat of intimacy and friendship until they complete their task and get back to normalcy. To back away from the sex that he is certain Crowley does not want.

Not with him. Not quite. Not since.

Not since Crowley had let him know in no uncertain terms that making a sex tape was positively _not_ what he wanted to be doing all those years.

Not with Crowley referring to him strictly as a _friend_ since forever and then the squirming mortification he had experienced in Aziraphale’s armchair— dreading the thought of sex with him so deeply that it made him hyperventilate and Aziraphale can still remember the feel of the cold sweat on his skin. The way that kiss had gone. The way his mouth was uncertain in a way that Aziraphale’s would never be when kissing Crowley. The way he had kept Aziraphale’s clothes on and had made no motion to remove them. The way he hadn’t been— there had been no—

Aziraphale closes his eyes and leans back on his heels. Lets his head droop down between his shoulders. Chin to chest.

Best not to think about such things, he tells himself. Best to just— do whatever Crowley needs to appease his former head office and then get back to however they had been living: late nights drinking wine together, strictly platonic dinner dates, spirited debates about human politics.

Best to just reassure Crowley again and again that no, this won’t change anything, darling. Not at all. Not even a little bit. We’re just friends. Best friends. Always will be.

His chest hurts.

Aziraphale opens his eyes again and Crowley is still an angular mass beneath a blanket, breathing softly.

He wants to touch him, feel him, make sure that he’s still real and that he’s still here. Still solid. Still breathing.

Aziraphale is, after all, a guardian first and foremost.

So he’ll guard him as best as he can. From a safe distance, he tells himself. A platonic one.

He blinks and there is a feather there, on his jaw, a tiny one perhaps from the pillow Crowley is steadily drooling on or perhaps from the ether— placed there with unhinged angelic intent.

He forgives himself immediately and blinks again, pressing the pad of his thumb over the tiny white feather and lifting it away.

If his fingers linger there for a moment too long, feeling the sharp new growth of Crowley’s facial hair and rubbing a bit at the bone underneath, he decides to forgive himself for that too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sure everyone and their mom knows what double exposures are but in case you don't-- it's when a piece of film is reshot with a second image on top of the first.


	6. 10-1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is legit just my id fic and I have no excuses for myself.

“This footage is unusable, Crowley.”

Crowley looks up from his bowl of cereal, one knee folded up and into his chest.

“What?” He asks, his mouth full of cheerios.

“It’s unusable,” Aziraphale says again, fast forwarding through the ancient tube television.

Crowley can see himself lying on the couch in the grainy video, Aziraphale between his legs and sped up.

He chokes a bit on a cheerio and Aziraphale turns around, patting him squarely between the shoulder blades.

Crowley waves him off with the back of his hand.

“Unusable _how_?” He manages, his eyes tearing up.

“Look.” Aziraphale gestures at the screen, as if it’s obvious. “We’re both wearing an entire set of clothes,” he says, clearly dissatisfied.

“Is— is that,” Crowley swallows, tries to find his voice, “a _problem_?”

It is silent for one whole heartbeat and for a moment Crowley wonders if he has said something wrong, made some sex tape faux pas.

But then Aziraphale straightens up a bit and inhales unsteadily and says rather shakily, “for a _sex tape_?”

Aziraphale turns and looks over the tiny glasses perched on his nose. “I’d say it’s a problem, yes.”

He pivots back to the television, rewinds, fast forwards.

“It looks fake,” he continues. “You can’t even see my penis,” he says, and gestures at the screen. “You could’ve been… sucking on your own fingers down there for all they’ll know. At the very least we should endeavor to show a bit more skin.”

Crowley realizes that the spoon has been hovering in the air halfway to his mouth for what probably amounts to a solid minute and he drops it, feeling suddenly nauseous.

“It’s _fine_ ,” he coughs. “Hell won’t— they won’t know.”

Aziraphale clears his throat, reaches for the bit of paper lying on the table. He picks it up, pushes his glasses up higher on his nose.

“ _The Council of Hell has issued an executive order demanding the physical proof of the aforementioned temptations, sexual acts, perversions, and liaisons of a ‘hard core’ variety with One (1) Holy Principality performed by the demon Crawly as referenced in Demonic Review Meetings beginning June 7, 1990, ’91 ’92 ’94, ’97, ’98, 2000, 2004, ’05, ’07. Failure to compile and submit these materials will result in the gradual suspension of all demonic integrities inherent to the corporeal design and may conclude with the eventual decay and discorporation of the physical body without restitution and the true form of One (1) demon Crawly banished to the sulphur pits for a to-be-determined length of time subsequently followed by an immediate and eternal unpaid internship in the Fifth-Circle mail room.”_

Aziraphale lowers the paper and pulls off his glasses.

“I’m not— I’m not taking a _chance_ on this, Crowley.”

His mouth is a thin line and Crowley tries to swallow down the lump in his throat. He pushes away his cereal bowl, scrubs a hand into his face.

“What happened in 2008?” Aziraphale asks, looking down at the letter again.

“Housing market crashed,” Crowley mumbles. “Some bloke in accounting designed it. Really took the heat off of me for a while.”

“Ah,” Aziraphale carefully folds up the letter, slides it in between them on the table. “Keep eating,” he says, and pours more cereal into Crowley’s bowl. “Do you need more coffee? I can make more—“

“— _No_ ,” he chokes out, having already gulped down an unfortunate amount of the stuff. “I’m good thanks.”

“Very well,” Aziraphale says. “When did you— when should we—?”

Crowley looks up, mouth full of food, and squints at Aziraphale. He is wearing his sunglasses, more out of habit than anything, and he realizes that with them on he can barely make out the color of Aziraphale’s eyes. Crowley swallows.

“I should go home first,” he mumbles. “Shower, change.” He sniffs in what he hopes is a surreptitious manner at his shirt and realizes the stress sweat has afflicted him again. He winces. “You know.” He shrugs.

“Oh.” Aziraphale looks down at his hands, which are currently wringing together a bit. He spins the pinkie ring absentmindedly. “Well if you wished— there’s no pressure really but— you’re very welcome to make use of my upstairs flat.”

Crowley blinks at him. The upstairs flat is a mythical place that he had been in only a handful of times— most recently to vomit into the toilet.

“Oh,” he says, and why is he so nervous he should _not_ be this nervous. It is an invitation to use a bathroom for Christ’s sake. “Yeah. That’d be great. So we can just— just get right to it then. Afterwards.” As if they are talking about redecorating a room, putting together Ikea furniture.

Aziraphale is very obviously not looking at him, busying himself with folding down the cereal bag and closing the box tabs.

“Time is rather of the essence, is it not?” Aziraphale asks, and shyly looks up.

Crowley can see his throat work as he swallows.

“Yeah,” he starts, a pit in his stomach that has nothing to do with hunger. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

The paper missive lays between them like an atom bomb, permeating the breakfast pastries on the table with a distinct top note of brimstone.

“I’ll clean up,” Aziraphale says softly, and reaches for the coffee cup.

He looks into it as if trying to ascertain from the quantity Crowley consumed whether he did a better job of preparing it this time. Perhaps satisfied with the near emptiness of it, he shifts a bit and then gathers up the cereal bowl.

“I’ll just uh— head up then,” Crowley mutters.

Aziraphale stops, smiles at him.

“Very well.”

There is something shy about him, something perhaps a bit eager and perhaps a bit nervous.

Crowley realizes why exactly three minutes later— as he steps into the tiny second-story bathroom and sees lined up on the porcelain pedestal sink an array of full-sized toiletries.

A pink toothbrush still in its packaging, a new tube of organic and expensive toothpaste, deodorant, a razor with too many blades, decadent looking shaving cream, tiny hair elastics, facial soap in a variety labeled _for sensitive skin_.

He wonders what about his face says _sensitive_ as his fingers brush reverently across the skyline of items. It is simultaneously a sweet gesture and an alarming one— as he glances into the mirror and sees the beginning of a ruddiness to his face that has nothing to do with his skin and more to do with the hair growing out of it. He leans in close to the mirror and eyes up his jawline, the copper hairs pushing through his skin. He leans back sharply, repulsed by this new betrayal of his body.

So he holds a palm up around his chin, over his mouth, closes his eyes. Tries to feel the familiar pull of magic that will remove such unfortunate and patchy looking scruff and transform it instead into the mustache he knows Aziraphale hates.

He pulls his hand away.

Nothing.

Resisting the urge to panic he instead rips open the packaging on the toothbrush, smears a glob of toothpaste onto it. He brushes angrily at his teeth and then softens as he thinks of Aziraphale out in the early morning light, buying him pastries and buying him a toothbrush, coming home and attempting to prepare coffee.

He stops. Grips the edge of the sink and breathes heavily through his nose, toothbrush sticking out of his mouth.

And then he pulls himself together— does not allow himself to think of what Aziraphale must’ve seen while he slept on the couch like some kind of _louse_ to facilitate this kind of care-taking. How pathetic he must’ve looked— a five-o’clock shadow on his sleeping face and his breath probably smelled bad and he won’t take this personally. He _won’t._

He spits into the sink and turns the shower tap on, deposits his toothbrush next to Aziraphale’s blue one in the same cup. Their bristles briefly kiss.

Crowley lets them linger like that for a moment and then slides them apart, something in his chest aching.

And then he steps into the shower, eyeing the shaving cream on the sink with a withering sort of dread and hoping that such human things come with decent instructions.

* * *

It did not, in fact, come with instructions.

Not useful ones, anyway.

As such his face is now a peppered mix of fluffy white and dots of red, pink where the two blend together.

He picks up his phone, shaving cream dripping off his face and onto the floor and he tries to type out _how to shave face_ with his shower-wet fingers.

“Crowley?”

He nearly drops his phone and then quickly toes the door shut.

“Yes just uh— finishing up,” he manages.

“Oh. Yes. Very good then. I just ah— hope you didn’t mind— I thought you might keep some effects here and—“

“Yeah got it. Great. Thanks.”

Crowley grits his teeth and winces at the silence on the other side of the door.

“Excellent, I’ll just— leave you to it, then,” Aziraphale says, sounding rather breathless.

Crowley waits for a beat, eyes closed, cursing his ignorance and his stupid, absurdly eager heart.

“Wait.”

He pulls open the door and stands mortified in a towel in the threshold.

“Do you have uh,” he starts, strangely out of breath, “an extra towel?”

It’s a stupid question. He _knows_ it’s a stupid question. Aziraphale’s bathroom is _filled_ with towels in an array of hideous pastel colors and stacked in numerous unorganized piles on a multitude of surfaces. The one currently around his waist is a rosy pink that Aziraphale had once described as _flamingo feather_.

He bites his tongue.

Aziraphale is halfway out the bedroom door already. But he turns at the sound of the bathroom door opening and has an incredible lack of reaction, as if completely nonplussed by the vision of Crowley in a towel with soaking wet hair, shaving cream all over his face. As if he is perfectly accustomed to his best friend standing half-naked in his bathroom, asking for an item that is clearly code for something else entirely.

“Of course,” he says softly. “Let me fetch it for you.”

Crowley steps back as Aziraphale walks toward him and there is suddenly so very little air in this tiny bathroom.

“Here we are,” he murmurs, and pulls down a small blue washcloth. He looks up into Crowley’s face, so close now, and gasps the smallest bit, eyes lingering on the pink along his jaw perhaps.

Crowley grits his teeth.

“Oh, my dear,” he starts, “you’re bleeding.”

Crowley can’t quite get his throat to work.

“Yeah, just— hand slipped.”

Aziraphale hesitates, and then with a sort of seamless single-mindedness shrugs out of his housecoat and begins rolling up the sleeves on his shirt.

He isn’t ready for it— not like this. Not cocooned in a pink towel in a borrowed bathroom, shaving cream dripping off his face and nothing over his chest to hide the beat of his heart that is so strong it _must_ be visible from the outside, from the street corner, from _space_.

Without his housecoat on Aziraphale from the rear becomes an abstract shape of two dreamy colors: blue and biscuit, something soft and reminiscent of comfort food, cloudless skies, _contentment_.

Aziraphale is running the tap on hot until steam rises up and Crowley watches those tiny ghosts, tries desperately not to stare at those angelic blue veins on that naked pale wrist.

Aziraphale wets the towel. Wrings it out.

“Here we are,” he says, and catches Crowley’s chin, tilts it up. His eyebrows come together, catching perhaps on second look the unfortunate number of nicks dotting his cheeks.

“Let’s start over again, shall we?” He murmurs softly, and Crowley closes his eyes as he nods.

And he’s grateful, he _is_ , that Aziraphale knows how Crowley hates to ask for anything, hates to admit what he doesn’t know. He knows too that Aziraphale loves to help, always has. That inherent need to help had been the only hook to get him to agree to the Arrangement in the first place.

Crowley opens his eyes to look at the parade of toiletries lined up on the sink— and then he sits down on the ledge of the porcelain soaking tub and lets Aziraphale step up close to him, their feet nearly kissing on the tile floor.

The mess on his face gets wiped away. A few more hand towels get called into service. The razor gets cleaned, diligently, and then placed on the sink to await further instructions.

Aziraphale picks up a conversation about his early morning foray without looking at him, as if it is perfectly normal to be smoothing shaving cream onto his best friend’s face, as if the idea of dragging a razor along the throat of his hereditary enemy isn’t strangely erotic.

“—and he just stepped right in front of me in the checkout line,” Aziraphale says, “see you go _with_ the grain at first, dear— and I calmly tapped him on the shoulder to alert him that he _had_ in fact skipped the queue by over four people—“

Crowley keeps his eyes closed because it is easier to control the speed of his breathing if he doesn’t have to look at Aziraphale’s eyes in this dreamy morning light. It’s easier to ignore the frenetic pulse of his heart if he doesn’t have to see Aziraphale with his shirt sleeves rolled back— to see the way his forearm flexes beneath the coverlet of gold-dust hair.

He has always had beautiful hands. Compact and neat and always, _always_ clean. Pink nail beds and perfect half-moon halos at the base of each one.

Crowley remembers, all at once, how they had looked wrapped around his cock.

He can feel his face heat, his ears growing hot. He flexes his jaw and then tries to relax it, tries to ignore the unwanted migration of blood to all the places he wants it the least.

“—he was _quite_ large, very tall and dark haired and—“

Aziraphale’s voice catches for a moment and Crowley snaps his eyes open, shifts his hips back.

“So— so then what?” He asks, as if he has been paying any attention at all to this story.

“Oh, erm, he was actually rather polite about it.”

Aziraphale tilts his face up and slides the razor down around his chin.

The blade makes a sound like sandpaper over his skin.

“That’s good,” Crowley murmurs, and tries to focus instead on literally anything besides Aziraphale’s wrists, the proximity of his face to that angelic belly, the warm vanilla sweetness of his smell.

“Thanks,” he says, looking past Aziraphale to the sink behind him. “For the toothbrush.”

“It’s no trouble— I didn’t know what color you’d like and I thought about getting you green but I don’t know if you even _like_ green and so I thought ‘well Crowley likes red’ but the nearest they had was pink.”

Aziraphale sounds breathless.

“Pink is nice,” he manages, staring at the way the toothbrush handles intersect in the cup.

“There we are,” Aziraphale says at the last pass of the razor, and gently cleans his face with the towel. It’s too gentle and too soft and Crowley doesn’t deserve it, he _doesn’t_. “All finished.”

“Thanks,” he mumbles again, and lets himself look, this time, at Aziraphale as he washes off the razor, as he rinses out the hand towel.

“I’ll leave you to it then,” Aziraphale says. “I’ll just— be downstairs. Getting things ready.”

“Ready,” Crowley repeats, blinking. “Right. Be right down.”

“Oh and there’s a clean shirt for you,” Aziraphale starts. “On the bed. If you want.”

Crowley looks down at his clothes in a pile on the floor, to the jeans he would shortly wiggle back into sans underwear, the shirt that definitely stinks like anxiety.

He can hear the door click shut and then leans his face down into his hands, trying to remember what it feels like to breathe.

* * *

It turns out that the shirt Aziraphale had been referring to is, in fact, one of the angel’s jumpers— hastily and obviously miracled to be black.

It’s giant on him, but as a result the v-shaped neck dips down enough that it feels strangely similar to his own shirts.

“Oh, hello,” Aziraphale greets him, peering once again into the viewfinder of the camera— the Betamax this time— and Crowley is developing perhaps a Pavlovian response to the sight of it, his breathing labored, sweat starting already on the back of his neck.

“Hey,” he breathes, and shoves his hands into his pockets.

That damnable list is on the table between them, yellow and garish and Aziraphale’s tidy scrawl has been scribbled out where it once said “ _Oral Sex_ ” but with the added note of a single question mark.

He notices rather slowly that the sofa has been pushed nearly to the back wall. He looks at it, then down onto the stretch of Persian rug that is exposed, the large and numerous pillows on the floor.

“Uh,” he says.

Aziraphale worries at his lip.

“It occurred to me that we did not in fact discuss where a majority of the ordinary… _deeds_ would take place.” He is spinning the pinkie ring again.

“So I thought, for _now_ , that we might as well— utilize the floor.”

“The floor,” Crowley repeats.

“I assure you this carpet has a suitably high nap as well as a very plush amount of padding beneath it,” Aziraphale says, as if offended on behalf of his carpet. “And besides I’ll— well I figured I would be the one on my hands and knees so—“

There is a very fine flush along Aziraphale’s cheeks as he very visibly does not look at Crowley, snatching instead the betamax tape off the table as if he needs something to do with his hands.

“You— You’re not,” Crowley starts, stops, can feel his ears burn hot. “No.” He settles on.

“No _what_?”

“You’re not— on your hands and knees—“

Aziraphale huffs and sets the tape down, rummages instead in a brown paper bag next to the camera.

“It is a perfectly common and respectable sexual position,” he argues, and Crowley tries not to look at the flex of his trousers as he bends.

“I’m not arguing that it’s not _common_ I’m arguing that it’s _respectable_ ,” Crowley mocks. “Doggy-style on the _floor—_ right of course you’re the bloody expert on this and— respectable according to who?”

“ _Whom_ ,” Aziraphale corrects, bent over still, and then he straightens up. “According to these,” he says, and drops something on the table.

Crowley blinks, squints, removes his sunglasses.

“Where did you get those,” Crowley asks flatly. “Oh Jesus Christ angel _where_ did you get those.”

The faded and well-loved covers of three VHS tapes stare back at him.

_Jumper_

_Adam & Yves_

_Debbie Does Dallas_

“The Ebay,” Aziraphale states proudly.

Crowley opens his mouth and lets it hang there, a hand comes up and scratches at his freshly shaved face.

“You bought… VHS porn. On the internet.”

“For research, yes.”

“And you _watched them_?” Crowley wants to add, _without me_? but decides better of it.

“They were all rather important films in the advent of erotic cinema and I thought we might—“ Aziraphale flexes his fingers and wiggles a bit, “—get _ideas_.”

Crowley covers his face with a hand and breathes into it.

“When did— why did you—“

“Oh, it’s not such a big thing,” Aziraphale scolds. “You told me _you_ have watched erotic cinema before and besides this is not for masturbatory purposes this is for _advice_.”

Crowley covers his face with a hand and breathes into it.

“Okay, I do not watch _erotic cinema_ ,” he says, doing what he hopes is a convincing impression of Aziraphale’s voice. “I watch amateur stuff because I’m not a sociopath.”

He realizes what it seems like he has just admitted to and attempts to back tread.

“And I watched it for— for _curiosity’s_ sake, thanks,” he adds lamely. He would like very much to tell Aziraphale that his tastes veer sharply away from _human_ and strongly towards a very specific ethereal form that has a penchant for wearing bow ties.

“All the same,” Aziraphale soldiers on, “sexual penetration from the rear _on the floor_ while on hands and knees is a common and respectable position that has appeared in all three of these films.”

Crowley tongues at his incisors and realizes he doesn’t know how to respond to that.

“And I assure you for today’s purposes the floor is perfectly functional and dare I say rather photogenic.”

Crowley looks down to the rug, with its swirling patterns of blue and gold through a brocade of red.

It seems to slam into him headlong that he is about to engage in fully penetrative sex with Aziraphale. On the floor of the bookshop.

He sways, feeling lightheaded, maybe a bit clammy.

“Are you— are you quite alright?” He hears Aziraphale ask.

He blinks a bit, tries to breathe.

“Fine,” he manages. “Peachy.”

There is suddenly a whole lot of angel directly in front of him, as close as he’d been in the upstairs bathroom, a hand on his arm and steadying him.

“Do you need more food?” He asks softly. “Water?”

Crowley watches his mouth move and then shakes his head, “no.”

The hand on his arm seems to squeeze gently and then releases him.

“Do you— is this alright?” Aziraphale asks, so quietly he can barely hear it.

“Yes,” he answers without thinking because his brain is already twenty steps ahead— imagining not only Aziraphale as unclothed as he has possibly ever seen him but also on his hands and knees— in such a submissive and vulnerable position.

And he wants to say _thank you_ for the trust and also _let’s not do this_ because he had always wanted their first time to be on a bed, a _nice_ bed, perhaps at the Ritz after an evening of piano music and good wine.

He’ll never admit it but he dreams often of Armageddon— not the one that had been promised but the one they had escaped. The one where they sat sharing wine out of the bottle on a bench waiting for a bus bound for Oxford.

He dreams of that night and Aziraphale coming home with him, _finally_ , showering in his shower and sleeping for the first time in his bed. He wakes up from those dreams sticky between the thighs and aching between the ribs, wondering if he had just been a little bit smoother, a little bit nicer, that it all could’ve gone down differently. That they would perhaps be filming this now as two misfits madly in love and putting up twin fuck-you fingers to his former head office, reveling in the knowledge that nothing could ever touch them. Not for something like this.

“I’ll go first,” Aziraphale says breathlessly. “You know, being on the receiving end. If that’s agreeable to you.”

Crowley finds himself nodding and he is probably staring at his mouth again so he snaps his eyes up to find Aziraphale’s gaze in the morning light.

“Yeah,” he breathes. “Okay. You first.”

He sucks his bottom lip between his teeth and bites down, confronted suddenly with the terror of making this right, of making it _good_. He files frantically through his memories, trying to pick out the good bits and discard the bad.

He understands, in theory, how it all works. He has witnessed enough orgies, has watched enough porn, has himself sparked enough illicit trysts to understand the mechanics, the messy emotions and the general _mess_.

But he also knows that such things were usually perpetrated by men overwhelmed with the manifesting of their own pleasure— rushing through preparations, fingers groping sticky in the dark, between legs, finding places that had give and would accept a finger, a foreign object, a dick.

And these things were always in the abstract, always between _humans_. He has no non-theoretical basis in what sex should be like, look like, _feel like_. He knows only that Aziraphale has existed in a locked box in his chest for thousands of years and he is not sure how to take him out of there, commit an animal act onto an ethereal body.

“Should— should I undress myself or—“

Aziraphale is backing away from him, hands hovering uncertainly over the buttons on his waistcoat.

There’s a navel there, Crowley knows, a line of fuzzy pale hair beneath it, like the skin on a peach. He had taken a good look at it once, at a bath house in Rome, just before it dipped beneath hot water and flattened the upright fluff of it.

He had thought about it so many times— that belly— in his shower, in bed, at his desk, on his ceiling.

“Or perhaps we should do it on camera. We need to fill more time in these and I’m afraid—“

“ _No_ ,” Crowley says.

Aziraphale looks up, startled.

“No?” He questions.

Crowley blinks and then shakes his head.

“You can keep them on,” he says. “I’ll just— I’ll pull down your—“ Heat flushes along his cheeks and into his ears and he exhales forcefully, annoyed at his bodily reaction to his own words. “Trousers,” he finishes.

Aziraphale looks shocked, then confused, and then his face closes off entirely into that guarded stalwart stare that he had become so proficient at after so many thousands of years.

“You’ll just—“ he licks his bottom lip, sucks on it briefly. “You’ll just pull down my trousers,” he repeats.

There’s a sort of emotional kickback as his own words sink in.

“I didn’t mean— I don’t _mean_ anything by—“

Aziraphale looks down at his hands threaded together in front of him, then out and over to the sofa pushed against that back wall.

He inhales rather unsteadily and then turns back to face him.

“I regret to inform you that this corporation is the only one I have and—“

“Angel, _no_.”

Aziraphale, Crowley realizes, won’t meet his eyes.

“It’s not— there’s nothing wrong with—“ He gives up, groans. And then runs a hand into his hair and _pulls_. “They don’t deserve to see you. Naked,” he bites out, and wants to add _and neither do I_.

Aziraphale is rooted in place, breathing heavily and blinking down at the floor.

“I’m _trying_ ,” Crowley manages, “to protect you.”

Aziraphale looks up, his eyebrows knitting together.

“That’s why?” He asks, carefully guarded.

Crowley forces himself to return his gaze.

“That’s why.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale says, and his throat moves as he swallows. “I thought— perhaps—“ he looks down at his stomach, rests a hand over it. “Thought perhaps it was me.”

Crowley swallows and perhaps he does need some water. His throat is horribly dry.

“Not you,” he squeezes out. “You look good.”

Aziraphale fiddles with the cuffs on his shirt, pulling them down.

“Thanks.”

“Really good,” he says, and then wants to bite off his own tongue.

It won’t help, he thinks, to have Aziraphale get the idea, again, that he’s been wildly in love with him for about the last six-thousand years now. It won’t help to add another layer of emotional turmoil on top of this already overflowing cup of misery. He closes his eyes and tries to imagine what it would be like to finally fess up, give up the whole ghost, blurt out something like _I’m still fucking in love with you_.

And then he quickly shutters the thought because the idea of Aziraphale knowing about and not returning his affection and choosing to fuck him on camera anyway— which he would do, Crowley knows— is a particular brand of torture that he decides he would rather not entertain. He remembers all at once pleading with Aziraphale on the street not ten meters away from where he currently stands. Remembers apologizing and begging and please, _angel, get in the car_ , _the whole world is about to end_.

Aziraphale looks shy and reticent across from him and Crowley wishes he hadn’t said anything. The last thing he wants is to make Aziraphale feel weird, uncomfortable, uneasy— more so than he probably is.

If it comes to that, he thinks, he’ll take the mortal body and the sulphur pits, the unpaid internship in the mailroom.

“You too,” Aziraphale says, a little out of breath, and Crowley wonders if he’s just being polite. “I mean, you always look handsome, so it’s not really a big deal but—“

Aziraphale’s hand is suddenly tugging at his and Crowley looks down at it, wondering when it got there.

“Let’s go make a sex tape,” he says.

“Oh,” Crowley says, still looking at their hands. “Let’s.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the next chapter is already written so I will be posting it shortly because I have a bad habit of writing and not stopping to actually, you know, post things. 
> 
> I cherish the nice comments omg. thank you all for getting me through the hell that is this quarantine <3 
> 
> 10-1 is just the code for when someone needs to use the bathroom on set.


	7. clean speech

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the id continues!

“A bit higher.”

“Like this?”

“Yes, but tighter.”

“This is harder than it looks, you know.”

“No— Wait you had it. Yes. There.”

Crowley exhales, inhales, feels his wrists going numb.

“This is ridiculous,” he mutters, and wrangles his hair with an elastic.

Aziraphale ignores him, smoothing back what he is sure are any number of errant strands of misbehaving hair.

“It’s looks good,” he says at last, and circles him as if he’s art, a statue, something to appraise and something to look at that isn’t a fucking disaster.

“Right, yeah,” he shoves his skinny fingers into the front pockets of his jeans and hates how they don’t fit.

“Allow me to just— ready a few things and then we’ll start,” Aziraphale says, and pockets his own fingers too.

Crowley nods and mutters _thank you_ and functions as if outside of himself, wandering uselessly around the bookshop as Aziraphale does everything else. He hitches his shoulders up to his ears and watches Aziraphale pull the blinds, double-check the _closed_ sign on the door, toggle the lock. He looks at Aziraphale’s books on the shelves and the clock on the mantle and tries to ignore the increasingly violent shake of his left leg.

At some point he finds himself on the carpet with no clue as to how he got there, a fugue state in the microcosm. He digs his fingers into the thick nap of Persian rug and realizes that Aziraphale hadn’t been hyperbolic, it _is_ plush.

The pillows surround him on three sides like some sort of feathered amphitheater and he sits on his knees in between them, empathizing suddenly with lambs led to slaughter, gladiators awaiting combat. 

There is a bottle of something next to him that he is trying very hard not to look at and Crowley wonders if Aziraphale bought it this morning, imagines water-based lubricant next to his sensitive-skin facial wash and pink toothbrush in a paper shopping bag.

“Let’s attempt to fill more time in this one,” Aziraphale says, and he is staring at that yellow legal pad, standing behind the camera. “I should really be timing these,” he mumbles to himself, lost seemingly in thought. “Perhaps we might include more vocalizations. Descriptions of what is happening?”

“Are you suggesting we talk dirty?” Crowley still has his fingers in the carpet and he squeezes at the fibers.

“Yes, I suppose I am.”

“Right.”

“And you’ll undress me on camera and— and I’ll undress you,” Aziraphale doesn’t sound sure about it.

Crowley refuses to look at him, staring instead at the Betamax and trying to understand how Aziraphale once called it _darling_. He wants to throw it out the nearest window and maybe back over it a few times with the Bentley but instead he just nods. Tightly.

“Good, good,” Aziraphale says briskly. “Do you need a snack? Lunch?” He looks at the clock on the book-covered mantle. “Brunch?” He amends.

Crowley shakes his head because his stomach feels like a Gordian knot of unending terror that has also been cast in bronze. If he could even manage to swallow he’s reasonably sure he’d vomit it all up anyway.

“What about—“ Aziraphale stops himself and looks down, puts the legal pad on the table. “Perhaps you should… take a moment and, you know, ready yourself?”

Crowley looks up at him and blinks.

“Ready myself?” A beat passes between them and then it hits him. Like a freight train. A car crash. “ _Oh_.”

It occurs to him that he is most likely the color of his new toothbrush and his brain locks onto the image of it upstairs like some kind of surrealist coping mechanism, imagining it casually rubbing against the handle of Aziraphale’s in the same cup.

He looks down between his legs.

“I could— I mean, you could perhaps watch one of the tapes I purchased or I have a few—“ Aziraphale clears his throat and looks back into the bookshop proper, “—a few rather steamy paperbacks someone donated or,” he stops himself and Crowley looks up, to see Aziraphale with his eyebrows drawn together and his hands tugging at the hem of his waistcoat, a common nervous habit that had left threadbare patches of it along the velvet edge.

“Or?” He asks, wishing he could instead melt into the floor and not be discussing methods for achieving and maintaining an erection with the object of his perpetual desire.

“I’d be willing to help again,” Aziraphale says quietly. “If you wished.”

His heart pumps something like battery acid, every nerve ending in his neck standing on electrified end.

His throat makes some sort of unfortunate sound and then he reigns it in, manages a single numb syllable. “Help?”

“Give a hand,” Aziraphale tries to smile but it doesn’t take. “You know.”

Crowley can’t tell if he looks nervous or disgusted or worried. Or maybe all three. He has half a mind of just grabbing the VHS of _Jumper_ and making off with the wheel-away television, bullying his dick into submission in private.

He glances at the faded cover of the film. A nude man in white angel wings looks beseechingly up at him beneath an unidentified stain and the animal part of his brain nods, figuring he could do that, this could work.

“Oh. Yes, excellent,” Aziraphale says, and Crowley realizes that he had just mutely agreed to let the angel fluff him.

“Uh,” Crowley says eloquently.

“Right we will just get ourselves settled and then we can begin,” Aziraphale is rubbing his hands together as if they are discussing cleaning the bookshop, organizing shelves.

He watches in wonder as Aziraphale moves over to him, as he kneels down on the floor. He isn’t wearing shoes, Crowley notices, and he can see now the surprisingly high arches of his socked feet.

“I’ll just— Just touch a bit to get you started then?”

His eyes are green up close.

Crowley’s tongue lies dead in his mouth, he feels like he’s about to choke on it.

“Sure,” he manages, and it comes out sounding like a hiss.

Aziraphale smiles at it, a _real_ one, and some crusted over part of him feels joy at the sight, sunlight coming up through the cracks.

“Like this?”

He is up close against him all at once, their knees nearly kissing and a hand is brushing up his thigh, near the junction of his hip.

Crowley finds himself nodding, watching the hand on his leg with a strange detachment.

There are fingers beneath his chin suddenly, lifting his face.

“Will kissing help?” Aziraphale asks quietly.

His lips up this close are pink and smooth and perfect and he cannot stop staring at them, at the promise of white teeth behind them.

He nods again in mute supplication, an angelic nose bumping softly into his and then sliding into place, hesitant lips pressing gently against his own.

Crowley moans into it and then stops himself— because the camera isn’t rolling, not yet— but there’s a hand pulling at his zipper, tugging it down and reaching inside and he isn’t ready for the shock of warm hand on him and another moan slips out in reflex.

He steadies himself with desperate fingers on Aziraphale’s arm, by the bicep, and he squeezes in conjunction with that hand between his legs.

Aziraphale pulls back, hand still moving.

“Is this good?”

He nods again in quiet desperation, eyes tightly closed. There is only the muted sound of Aziraphale breathing, his _own_ breathing, the soft sound of skin moving over skin. He can hear people on the street, outside, walking on the pavement.

It’s so impossibly, mortifyingly awkward that he can feel his stomach clenching in fear, his balls doing that unfortunate habit of trying to reverse puberty and crawl up inside him— afraid all at once that he’s going to repeat his past performance and Aziraphale shouldn’t have to do this to begin with.

Someone outside the bookshop laughs and it feels directed at him.

“This ok?”

Aziraphale looks down at his hand and the lack of reaction in Crowley’s jeans.

“Fucking hell, sorry,” he mumbles, his face feels impossibly hot.

The hand pulls away and Crowley’s eyes open in shock.

“Wait—“

“It’s quite alright,” Aziraphale is murmuring, sliding behind him. “Just trying something else.”

There’s an arm around his waist, pulling him back until he’s sitting on the floor and butting up against a strong chest. Legs stretch along the outside of his own and then a hand pulls him up close, presses over his heart.

“Close your eyes,” a voice whispers in his ear and a hand finds its way between his legs again.

He obeys and wants to tell him that this is all he really needs— Aziraphale’s warm voice in his ear and maybe a closer proximity to that steady beating heart.

“That’s it,” Aziraphale murmurs. “This is better isn’t it? Just relax, it’s okay.”

The hand speeds up the smallest amount, stilted by the confines of his jeans.

“There you are,” he breathes, and the hairs on the back of Crowley’s neck stand on end, blood migrates to its desired location. “You’re being so good for me, aren’t you?”

He shivers out a broken moan and lets his head tip down into his chest in mortified reaction.

“Oh fuck.”

“Almost there, dear,” he soothes, that steady hand stroking him to stiffness in a slow, maddening rhythm. “You’re doing wonderfully. Just a bit more.”

He exhales down into his chest, into his borrowed jumper, has a fleeting thought of telling Aziraphale _yes_ , okay, fine, praise noted, _erection achieved_. But his hand is so warm and he is doing something remarkable with his thumb on the upstroke, the cage of his fingers four satisfying elevations to rock into. And then suddenly the metaphorical train he had desperately been trying to jump on is not only beneath his feet but also heading directly for a cliff.

“Shit. Shit wait—“

He stills the hand in his jeans with a clenching hand of his own, biting down hard on his lip and opening his eyes to stare out at the wall, the camera, _anything_.

The cliff retreats.

“ _Christ_ ,” he mutters, and tries to catch his breath. Aziraphale’s hand pulls away and so does the rest of him, his back is suddenly cold without his heat there.

“I’m sorry I— suppose I got a bit carried away.”

“No,” he croaks out, heat spreading across his cheeks and he doesn’t want to turn around, not yet. “It’s fine. Thanks.”

He shifts his cock in his jeans and curls his legs up under him, turns shyly so they face each other.

He’s grateful at least that he still has sunglasses on, something to hide behind and hopefully Aziraphale can’t see his eyes, see the way they linger too long on those hands that had just been between his legs.

“Good. I suppose— Shall we start then?” Aziraphale asks, and his hand taps nervously on his leg.

“Yeah,” he manages. “Yeah I’m ready.”

That nervous hand lifts hesitatingly up to his face and hovers there, as if uncertain, and then in one satisfyingly sharp _snap_ of his fingers he pulls down a miracle and the show, Crowley realizes, has begun.

There is the plastic _click_ of the tape sliding into the deck as if moved by invisible fingers and the hideous whirling sound of the camera rolling, a red light glaring at him balefully.

Crowley glances at it and swallows.

He looks back and Aziraphale is closer— near enough that Crowley can see the myriad colors in his eyes, the strata of gold that laces through them.

“Undress me?” Aziraphale asks softly, too quietly for the camera to hear.

He nods and meets his eyes and there’s a flush on Aziraphale’s cheeks, something fiery in the wideness of his pupils. Fear maybe, or simple apprehension. Their hands brush each other and travel down to his chest, beneath his heart, linger there on the well-loved velvet of his waistcoat.

It turns out that the buttons on it are surprisingly stubborn, they hold fast even as two sets of hands fumble blindly at them, eyes too busy holding contact to watch what they’re doing.

There are seven buttons there, Crowley knows, one for each day of Creation.

The first button goes and he forces himself to think of anything other than undressing Aziraphale, anything other than this slow reveal for Hell. He tries not to think about the demons in his maybe-future mail room catching the sight of those freckles on Aziraphale’s collarbone, the shifting topography of shadows on his chest.

Instead he squeezes his eyes closed and thinks about the first day, this first button— it had been the day that had seen the invention of light and the invention of dark and he wonders wildly if there’d been a darkness inside him already by then. If he’d been a demon by design.

The second button slips free and he knows that’s when water and air became separate things, like him and Aziraphale, like a fish and a bird created on day five, existing in separate spheres and meeting somewhere in the middle— on land, _earth_ , the dry terra of creation on day three.

Their lips find each other on button four, and it’s for the best because Crowley’s throat is tight as he steadily lays his love bare, as he remembers the feeling of weaving raw elements into stardust, stardust into nebula. Perhaps Aziraphale feels it too, the way his shoulders are uneasy in this borrowed shirt, counting down a time when they’d both been angels.

They get to the sixth one and pull back, breathing down into the space between them. God had made humans and had made land animals, had made the serpent form he’d been forced inside.

Aziraphale slips out of the waistcoat and slips Crowley out of his sunglasses, pulls them gently off his face as if to remind himself of his reptile eyes, the still vertical split of his pupils.

A thumb brushes along his cheek bone, up into the orbital ridge as their mouths find each other again.

He’s moaning into it and can nearly forget about the camera behind them, beyond them, recording this entire intimate moment.

The jumper gets pulled up and over his head, revealing that he had been wearing nothing underneath— a fact which probably would’ve scandalized Aziraphale in real life or at least would’ve garnered a few _you’ll catch a chill_ comments but the only reaction now is _heat_ , is a strange distilled burn that seems to emanate from the look on Aziraphale’s face, from the reverent pass of his hands. They trail up his shoulders, then down his chest— leaving something that feels like fire in their wake— pausing to briefly thumb across the pebbled pink of his nipples.

Wide eyes flash up to meet his.

“How’s this?” Aziraphale asks.

“Good. It’s _good_.”

And then he is fumbling at the rest of Aziraphale’s damned buttons— first the ones on those wrists, the ones he had stared at or tried not to stare at all morning. And as he unbuttons the cuffs he has the wild realization that he gets to act, to _play_. He can pretend to be in a relationship with Aziraphale on camera because that’s exactly what they were supposed to be anyway.

He pauses mid button, looks up at Aziraphale’s face. As if he is somehow understanding what Crowley is thinking he nods in wild encouragement, bites at his lip.

He finishes with the button and then pushes back the cuff, leans down and presses a kiss against the blue veins, sucks a little at the skin.

Aziraphale moans like it feels good, like sucking on a wrist would feel pleasurable at all. _Acting_ , Crowley reminds himself, and pulls back to unbutton Aziraphale’s shirt.

There’s an undershirt beneath it and Crowley glances back at the camera behind him, grateful suddenly for Aziraphale’s layers, for a little more time to hide him. Then he closes his eyes and runs curious fingers along the hem of his last layer, opens them to find Aziraphale ghost-white and uncertain, breathing unsteadily.

“You ok?” He says, as quietly as possible.

He can see Aziraphale’s jaw flex, a certain reticence to his expression— as if suddenly not quite so comfortable with the idea of Crowley seeing him naked.

“Yes— yes, I’m fine,” Aziraphale whispers.

Crowley is about to call the whole thing off, fuck it, living isn’t worth the terror he can see in Aziraphale’s face. But then Aziraphale is lifting the undershirt and there’s that belly exactly as he’d remembered— hundreds of years ago— covered in soft white fuzz like a peach and there are above it soft shoulders, pink nipples, hair between them that is so blond it appears silver.

“ _Christ_ ,” he mutters, and realizes belatedly that he’s staring everywhere but Aziraphale’s face.

The angel clears his throat, audibly swallows.

 _Acting_ , he thinks again, and looks up in wonder. He can use it, use _this_ — the time and the space captured on film to say every word that he has ever carefully bitten back, can stretch himself to fit between the frames.

He blinks.

“You’re fucking gorgeous,” he says, all truth, his voice cracking, loud enough for the shitty mic to pick up and Aziraphale looks shocked at the sudden boldness, confused maybe by the words.

“You’re so _fucking_ gorgeous,” he says again, probably too desperately and too breathlessly and he finds that he can’t look Aziraphale in the eye, not like this, so instead he stares at those lovely pale shoulders, the gentle curve of his collarbone.

“I’m gonna— I’m gonna—“

He stumbles over what the fuck to actually say, how to play at dirty talk when what he’s saying is actually what he wants in real life too. He tries desperately to think of something filthy but the only thing that rises in his throat is _I’m madly in love with you_. 

He swallows it down like bile, pulls up something else.

“Make you scream my name,” he blurts it out and can feel the blood rushing to his face. Aziraphale cocks an eyebrow at him in bemused surprise, as if he is proud of Crowley taking initiative.

“Oh, that’s very good,” he whispers emphatically, and Crowley’s head swims with the praise.

“Thanks,” he says, embarrassed.

“Do keep going,” Aziraphale encourages, and lifts careful fingers to run up his chest.

It has the same effect as pulling out the power cord on a television— Crowley’s mind goes blank. He stares down at those manicured hands spanning across his ribs and wonders if Aziraphale realizes the organ beating wildly inside them has ached for him since Eden.

“What else are you going to do to me you fiendish demon?”

Aziraphale is suddenly so close, nipping at his ear, running his hands up along his back.

“I’m gonna—“

Crowley tries to think but it is remarkably difficult with Aziraphale’s hands dipping down low into the edge of his loosened jeans.

“I’m gonna fuck you with my pecker,” he attempts, and then winces.

Aziraphale stills in front of him, pulls back, looks faintly disinterested.

“Oh— Crowley that’s… that’s rather filthy,” Aziraphale whispers.

Crowley tries to meet his eyes.

“Oh sorry, too filthy?” He whispers back, his cheeks burning hot.

Aziraphale wiggles a bit.

“It’s a bit offensive isn’t it?”

Crowley tries to block as much of Aziraphale from the camera as possible.

“Penis?” He asks helpfully. “Cock?”

Aziraphale shrugs a bit, considers the options, “those are better.”

“I’m gonna fuck you with my penis,” Crowley says, louder, somewhat over his shoulder.

“Excellent delivery,” Aziraphale whispers.

“Thanks,” he breathes.

“Trousers should come off, yes?” Aziraphale says quietly, and Crowley can feel his breath on his face.

He nods and they pull apart and then he’s tugging at his trousers, already loose around the hips and he hesitates, looks up nervously to Aziraphale’s face.

The angel is hesitating at his own trousers, fingers thumbing briefly at the button, the zipper. And then they lock eyes and nod and both take the plunge together, shucking their last vestiges of clothing and studiously not looking at the other.

It’s ridiculous— he’s already had the thing in his mouth but chancing a glance at it here— all of him, the full angelic package, _no clothes_ , is somehow different and somehow more terrifying.

They both pull up onto their knees, edge towards each other, eyes locked and Crowley can only see him in the periphery, not all at once.

But even from the corner of his vision he can see how Aziraphale is round and soft and smooth and _lovely_ , he thinks, hands skimming up his chest, over his shoulders, holding at the jaw of him so he can tilt Aziraphale’s face up and press a kiss against him.

It’s like a dream, a play, _theater_. He releases a moan and remembers he doesn’t have to hold it back because as long as the camera is rolling he has an alibi, an _out_.

They pull back and Aziraphale is flushed, looking from his lips to his chest to his cock and back up again, both of them on their knees and breathing like the air has gone out of the room.

Crowley inches forward, closer, and then all at once Aziraphale is pressing into him, hands cupping his jaw and kissing him, touching from thigh to sex to belly to chest. He can feel the rhythm of Aziraphale’s heartbeat strong against his ribs.

Crowley gasps into his mouth, runs curious fingers down his spine.

There’s the impossibly hot velvet of Aziraphale’s cock pressing into his belly, his own sex wedged up against the soft give of angelic hip. He gets to Aziraphale’s waist and stills his hands, hesitates.

As if catching onto his uncertainty Aziraphale grabs at his wrists, pulls them down and around to the soft swell of his backside and it’s some sort of hard-wired instinct to dig his fingertips into that wealth of muscle, to moan like it’s being ripped out of him.

“Yeah?” Aziraphale is moaning breathily against his jaw and rolling against him. “You’re going to fuck me?”

The world suspends itself for a moment. Hangs perfectly silent. Then it speeds forward and he is suddenly back on that train going far too fast towards a familiar cliff.

He pulls back, squeezes a hand around the base of himself and tries to breathe.

“ _Christ_ , angel,” he whispers, eyes closed tight.

But Aziraphale doesn’t respond so he pulls his eyes open— to see him reaching instead for that bottle Crowley had been trying very hard not to look at.

Aziraphale straightens up, inverts a bit of liquid into his hand.

Crowley watches it in mute terror— realizing dimly that he is going to have to deal with an entirely different problem than he’d encountered on their first tape.

“Oh,” Aziraphale moans and reclines himself back onto the pillows, palms his cock with a slick hand.

“This feels so— so good,” he breathes out, stroking himself and Crowley’s jaw feels like it’s somewhere on the floor, on the plush nap of the carpet.

“You’re gonna make me feel so good, aren’t you?”

He realizes he’s supposed to answer after a few seconds of mute staring and his brain restarts, tries to anyway.

“Uh, yeah. Gonna… gonna make you feel so good,” he is about to end that sentence with _angel_ but it feels both too intimate and not enough.

“Come here,” Aziraphale says softly, and Crowley manages to move until he’s between his thighs, at a loss for what to do with his hands.

“Do you need me to— do you know what to do?” Aziraphale whispers, and Crowley is amazed and alarmed that he can jerk himself off and still communicate with such alacrity.

“Yeah.” His throat barely works and his voice sounds scratched to hell but he manages. Barely. “I can— I can do it,” he murmurs.

“Okay,” Aziraphale says, and leans back slowly, parting his thighs a bit further.

Crowley’s throat feels sealed entirely closed, he’s pretty sure his heart has been squeezed up into his mouth. But he takes the bottle and pours what he hopes is a decent amount onto his fingers, presses them softly to Aziraphale’s skin.

He isn’t sure if it’s polite to look so he _doesn’t_ and ends up getting lubricant all over the inside of Aziraphale’s right thigh before a hand comes down and wraps around his wrist, stilling it. He looks up into Aziraphale’s face.

“Right here.”

The hand guides him down, _lower, over_ , and he isn’t sure whether maintaining eye contact is polite either but maybe _not_ holding it is worse. So he just closes them entirely and rubs circles against the velvet muscle of his entrance.

“ _Oh_.”

Aziraphale starts breathing out in tiny high-pitched gasps, still stroking himself and Crowley opens his eyes, glances down between his legs.

He’s pale and pink, balls pulled up tight and they’re _cute_ , Crowley thinks, brushing his thumb across them—the shine of lubricant on his white skin gleaming pornographic in the daylight. Those tightly muscled thighs flex and fall open, Aziraphale’s mouth won’t stop saying Crowley’s name.

“ _Crowley_.”

He looks up, dazed, to see Aziraphale’s eyes hooded and dark, lips wet and the pulse is visible in his neck, matching the suck of air into his mouth.

“Please,” Aziraphale says softly, and rolls his hips in invitation.

Crowley freezes. Panic laces through him.

“Are you sure?” He whispers. “We don’t have to do this— Angel we can stop—“

“Crowley,” he whispers back, and Aziraphale’s eyes are not quite focusing but also apparently not fucking around. “Do it.”

He can feel his heart beating clear through his back, between his shoulder blades, probably visible for the camera. And then he swallows and looks down and pushes his middle finger in.

It’s impossibly hot and tighter than he would have imagined, the rim of muscle squeezing at his knuckles.

Aziraphale’s head tilts back, his eyes slide shut. Crowley can see the perfect semicircle of his teeth from this angle, the white row of them in his vaulted mouth.

And he is all at once on that train again and barreling too quickly toward a familiar cliff, his cock aching and leaking and he tries to think of ducks at the park, tax forms, Aziraphale’s shitty computer from 1992— anything other than the frightening suction of Aziraphale’s body on a single finger and what it will feel like on his cock.

He bites down hard on his lip and replaces Aziraphale’s hand on his cock with his own, realizing all at once that he does not want to be like those men fumbling in the dark— he wants to make this _good_.

He turns his hand, pulls out, presses in, strokes him off. He’s always been good at multitasking and he thinks of driving Aziraphale around in his car while also fiddling with the radio, his phone, looking at the angel next to him. All of it, he thinks hysterically, has been good training for _right now_.

Aziraphale moans like he actually likes it— like it isn’t just for show— and the stroke of power and pleasure that coils up in his brain at the sound has him thinking clearly for the first time in what feels like decades.

“More,” Aziraphale bites out, eyes closed, and rolls his hips down onto Crowley’s hand. “Crowley, _more_.”

“Fuck,” Crowley whispers. “You sure?”

Aziraphale snaps his eyes open.

“Yes,” he whispers hotly. “You won’t hurt me. I promise.”

This time they hold eye contact, a second finger joining the first, and then a third, until Aziraphale’s eyes roll back along with his head.

“Oh _yes_ , darling, that’s so good— just there—a bit to the left— up a little more— _there_ , oh wait a bit harder-- _oh_.”

Crowley doesn’t know where to look— between those thighs or Aziraphale’s face, that chest that is rapidly beginning to glow under a light sheen of sweat. His white teeth are digging into his bottom lip and Crowley wants it in his mouth again, desperately, but Aziraphale is too far away— reclined back and moaning.

His head lifts up suddenly, looks dazedly into Crowley’s eyes.

“I want you inside me.”

His heart stops, restarts, _aches_. Crowley cannot say why his chest twists at the words, he cannot say why he pulls his fingers away and his hand away and feels horrifyingly empty. The words have bite for a reason he does not understand.

He watches in mute fascination at the surreal sight of Aziraphale rolling over onto his knees, shyly, and slowly bending forward.

He can see everything— all of him— the lightly furred crease of him and the back of his balls pulled up tight and pink, the milky white thighs that have probably never seen sunshine judging by the pure unblemished stretch of them.

There are faint lavender lines there too, striping up his thighs— _stretch marks_ , he realizes slowly— and a feeling like pride and protectiveness surge in his chest. His heart feels squeezed tight. All those crepes, he thinks, and smudges a grateful thumb against them, _those are our dinner dates_.

He puts a hand on Aziraphale’s skin, on that soft white bottom, traces out the small shape of a heart.

“Would you?” Aziraphale says, over his shoulder, and Crowley can feel his heart beat further up this time, the roof of his mouth even, as he slides into place behind him.

He picks up the bottle and squeezes more out onto his palm, smoothes it onto his cock. The lovely white swell of Aziraphale’s skin is moving in and out of view as he looks down at himself, as he tries not to give in to the pleasures of his own hand.

They’re facing the camera more directly, enough so that the sudden ability to speak to each other not in outrageously fake dialogue is stripped from them. He feels an entire ocean apart.

So Crowley bends down and presses a kiss into Aziraphale’s shoulder, tries to keep space between their bodies as he does. He wants to say something up this close, one last time, in his ear, something like _I’m sorry_ or _thank you_ or maybe even _it never should’ve happened like this_. But all he manages out is a quiet, “ _angel_ ,” and slowly pushes inside.

Aziraphale keens like it hurts, head dropping down between his shoulders and back flexing and Crowley freezes— trying to breathe around the sudden grip of shockingly strong muscles.

“Shit are you—“

“Keep— keep going,” he gasps out and Crowley nods as if Aziraphale can see it, leaning back until he’s upright again and eases himself inside.

He’s tight at the rim and terrifyingly soft everywhere else, like a cloud, a pillow, dizzyingly warm and Crowley can’t catch his breath, can’t feel his toes.

Then Aziraphale _moves_.

He isn’t expecting it— not even _close_ — Aziraphale pulling himself forward, off of his cock, and then sliding back onto it, moaning so loud that Crowley can’t hear himself think, blood rushing in his ears.

“Oh fuck,” he says weakly, trying to hold on. _“Oh fuck_.”

It’s too hot and too tight and the pleasure multiplies exponentially, spreads out, reaches his toes. An immense sort of suction amplified by a burning slick heat— pleasure ratcheted up to an eleven.

He squeezes his eyes shut and grasps useless fingers at Aziraphale’s hips, trying to hold on to some semblance of control, of reality— and Crowley has the hysterical thought that for all he is the one doing the penetrating the only one getting fucked right now is _him_.

Aziraphale’s head tips back as he pushes all the way onto him, bottoms out.

“ _Crowley_.”

And suddenly Crowley is on that train again and the cliff is white and looming and he finds himself making some high-pitched desperate sound as Aziraphale slides forward, slides back and it’s too much, _too much_.

He grabs himself by the base and pulls out, comes all over Aziraphale’s back— four thrusts and ten whole seconds.

It’s blinding and hot and he feels shame even as he feels good, as he shivers through an orgasm that won’t seem to stop.

He hears a snapping sound and that whirling of the camera stops, the red light dims and goes out.

“Crowley—“

Aziraphale is straightening up and looking back over his shoulder at what is an absurdly large amount of mess down his spine, up near his shoulder blades, probably in his hair.

“ _Oh_.”

“I— _sorry_ ,” he gasps, is all he can really think to say. He grabs at his discarded jumper and uses a sleeve to wipe up his mess. Which, he realizes in embarrassment, is _everywhere_.

“Oh you really don’t have to do that, my dear it’s— it’s really quite fine.”

“No I— I made a _mess_ and—“

His throat seals itself closed and there is a strange sharp feeling in the corners of his eyes that he blinks and blinks and tries to free himself from.

“Crowley.”

Aziraphale turns around and sits cross legged in front of him, still hard and leaking and Crowley should probably stop staring at it.

“It’s quite alright,” he says again, firmer this time, maybe a bit shy and maybe a bit flushed, his blond curls tousled into fluffy pale clouds.

“These things happen,” Aziraphale continues with a breathy sort of laugh, smiling and blinking and looking altogether too earnest and too lovely for an angel who had just been graffitied in mostly-demonic spunk.

Crowley groans and drops the jumper, rubs his clean hand into his face.

“Sorry,” he mutters, hopefully unintelligibly.

“Perhaps you need lunch.”

“I _don’t_ need lunch.”

“Water then, have you been hydrating?”

Crowley wants to tell him that his premature ejaculation has nothing to do with an issue of hydration and everything to do with six-thousand years of blue balls.

“I’m _fine_ ,” he hisses. “Just. You know— you didn’t—“

He gestures in the vague area of Aziraphale’s hips and can feel the tips of his ears light practically on fire.

Aziraphale looks down at himself.

“It’s no trouble— I’ll just— it’s really quite fine.”

Crowley looks over at the tapes on the table, sees the cover of _Jumper_ , the angel wings.

“I could put one of the tapes on for you,” he says. “If you want.”

Aziraphale looks confused, then rather disgusted.

“I’m not— no, that’s very kind of you but—“

“It’s _not_ ,” Crowley snaps.

“Oh,” Aziraphale looks startled and then smiles. “Of course not. You are simply… foisting pornography on me. Very demonic of you.”

Crowley chews for a moment on his tongue and then swallows.

“I could— I’d help,” he manages, an echo of earlier. “If you wanted.”

Aziraphale blinks at him somewhat owlishly and opens his mouth, closes it.

“It’s not a big deal,” Crowley mumbles. “Just an offer. You don’t have to read anything into it or anything and—“

“—Okay.”

“—it’s only fair after— _what_?”

“If— if you’re offering then,” Aziraphale flushes pink, “okay.”

“Oh.” His mouth goes dry.

“We should film it,” Aziraphale says hastily. “More footage. You know.”

Crowley scratches at his throat absentmindedly, feeling somewhat disarmed.

“Sure. Yeah.” He sucks on his teeth.

“I think the best blocking might be if I’m facing the camera and— and perhaps—“ Aziraphale rearranges some pillows into a neat semicircle. “I could sit between your legs?”

Crowley bites down on his desire to say _no, I don’t think so, no._ It will put him in an almost entirely exposed position and the thought of that shitty, definitely not _darling_ camera picking up the marks up his thighs, the flush on his cheeks, the shuddering way he breathes out Crowley’s name makes his stomach ache with jealousy.

“Is that what you want?” He says instead, and stares down at the pillows.

“I think that’s probably best for the camera,” Aziraphale says quietly, and Crowley notices that he isn’t quite looking at him either.

“Yeah, sure.”

He is certain he sounds like some sort of petulant child but he hesitates to say anything else— to make Aziraphale believe for even a second longer than he is somehow ashamed of his softness.

So he wedges himself up against those pillows, parts his thighs.

“Come ‘ere,” he says softly, and offers up a hand.

Aziraphale hesitates, looks at it, finally takes it.

He kneels down in front of him and then slowly turns around, settling between his spread legs. 

“Is this okay?” Aziraphale murmurs as he backs up into the cradle of his thighs.

Crowley’s knees come up and bookend him, squeeze him up tight to his chest. He loops his arms protectively around Aziraphale’s middle and tries to cover as much of him as he can with his stupid skinny arms, tries to hide the precious peach fuzz of his belly.

“Yeah,” He says, somewhere behind Aziraphale’s ear. “Yeah this is good.”

“Okay,” Aziraphale breathes in a sort of ragged gasp. “Should we— Perhaps we should talk to the camera? Tell it what happened? You know for— for contingency’s sake?”

“Fucking hell,” Crowley mutters. “ _Fine_.”

Aziraphale shifts a bit between his legs.

“Ready?”

“Ready.”

Crowley smoothes his hand out flat just beneath his navel, the other one held lightly over Aziraphale’s heart. It thrums out a steady rhythm and he presses his forehead into the soft skin of Aziraphale’s shoulder, swallows back the cresting wave of emotion.

That finely manicured hand comes up, snaps crisply. The plastic _clip_ of the recorder button being pressed sounds and then there’s that horrible whirling sound, the red light is staring at him again.

Aziraphale clears his throat.

“Where were we dear?”

Crowley tries to hide in the white fluff of Aziraphale’s hair, sticking his nose into it and inhaling and up this close he can close his eyes and forget how absolutely gone to shit everything is. He breathes in that warm vanilla heat, the ghost of Aziraphale’s early morning cologne that has since nearly dissipated under sweat and exertion, grits his teeth.

He swallows, pulls back, tries not to look at the camera.

“You made me feel too good,” he says, not untruthfully, and then mashes his forehead into Aziraphale’s ear. “Came too fast.”

The butterflies in his stomach grow, expand, _flutter,_ as Aziraphale leans his head into the embarrassed motion.

“Nonsense,” Aziraphale says, and picks up the hand that is over his heart, presses a kiss into the palm of it. “You did exactly as I wanted.”

 _Fuck_.

He huffs out a surprised and ragged breath and drops his forehead back to Aziraphale’s shoulder, grinds lightly against his back. There’s a steady gnawing heat in his lower belly, a rising desire.

“So now you’re just going to keep pleasing me,” Aziraphale continues, with the same sort of quiet confidence that Crowley had fallen so desperately in love with.

“Yes,” he agrees. “Whatever you want.”

“Jerk me off, will you?” He asks, far too sweetly.

“Course,” he murmurs, and wraps his hand around his cock.

Aziraphale moans perhaps a bit too loud, a bit too _fake_ , shifts between Crowley’s legs.

“That’s so good, darling.”

His other hand comes down, cups between Aziraphale’s legs.

“Yeah?” He breathes, feeling a bit too tired and too wrung out to give into the full theatrics.

“So good.”

Aziraphale’s head tilts back onto Crowley’s shoulder as he strokes him off, slowly and then faster, bit by bit, rolling the soft skin of his balls in his other hand.

“Oh— Crowley, _yes_.”

He’s moaning and shivering and Crowley squeezes him a little closer, a little harder, picks up his pace.

“Not too fast is it, angel?”

He says it and then feels a puncture of regret, the slow bleeding of an ancient wound. He buries his face against Aziraphale’s jaw, squeezes his hand a little tighter.

He’d replayed that night in his car in Soho far too many times, could recall perfectly the red light on Aziraphale’s face and the shine in his eye as those words he’d said had excised Crowley’s heart from his chest, had taken their pound of flesh.

Aziraphale’s eyes flutter and then squeeze shut, the jaw next to Crowley’s cheek flexes.

“No,” he says softly, and moans. “Never.”

He presses a grateful kiss into that pale neck, keeps a steady rhythm with his hand. There’s liquid that he can feel but not quite see, spreading over his fingers from the tip of Aziraphale’s cock.

“Come on, angel,” he says breathlessly, feeling the slow shudder of Aziraphale’s muscles as his orgasm grows closer, caught up in the heady power of making the angel moan. “That’s it, you can let go, sweetheart.”

There is a hand suddenly on Crowley’s thigh, squeezing impossibly tight, Aziraphale’s breath suddenly ragged and desperate, muscles flexing up.

“ _Crowley I—_ “

There’s a broken little cry and then he can feel the cock in his hand pulsing as he strokes him through it, butting a proud nose into his neck.

“Yeah, keep coming, angel. That’s good.”

Aziraphale’s muscles finally relax, he leans boneless into Crowley’s chest.

There’s a drowsy finger snap and the camera powers off, the red light dims and goes out. The show is over, he thinks, the curtains are down.

They both breathe in a strained silence and he isn’t sure what to do with his hand— still wrapped around Aziraphale’s softening cock and covered in his spend, the other hand splayed out loosely on his thigh.

He isn’t sure whether it’s polite to pull his hand away just yet but he also can’t just hold onto his dick forever so he waits a few seconds and then unlocks his fingers, drags it away. He has the fleeting idea of wiping it on the carpet just to see what Aziraphale would say, and then the thought vanishes as the angel moves away from him.

He turns around slowly, shyly, blinking a bit much and his lips are parted, he looks so very confused.

“You ok?” Crowley asks, and his hand is still covered in jizz and hovering mid air, he isn’t sure what to do with it.

“Did you— Why did you—?”

The ejaculate is drying and he feels suddenly so exposed, so oddly, impossibly naked— so _cold._ He closes his legs and wants to curl up into a ball, protect his soft parts.

“What?” He snaps, perhaps a bit too sharply.

Aziraphale blinks at him and closes his mouth.

“Nothing— let me get you a towel and some clothes. Would you like to order lunch?”

He watches Aziraphale step into his underwear and trousers, tug them up around his hips. His brain races, his mind feels scrambled. He tries desperately to remember if he’d said anything untoward, had unintentionally upset him.

But he can’t think of anything, can only remember the sound of Aziraphale saying his name, shuddering in his arms.

He closes his eyes, flexes his jaw.

He’s suddenly so fucking furious. At everything. At his dumb dick that is halfway hard and that had come too soon, at the ugly Betamax camera that is staring at him, at the letter from Hell still sitting on the table in the kitchenette, at the pink toothbrush just casually leaning against Aziraphale’s upstairs.

He hates everything, his stupid fickle body and his stupid hungry stomach, his human desire for water and comfort and warmth. He wants to crawl up into the corner of his bedroom again, wants to sleep there for a few centuries.

But he _can’t_ , he realizes, he can’t walk up walls anymore or sleep for more than twelve hours. He can’t miracle away the jizz on his hand or the gooseflesh on his arms and his eyes won’t stop _burning_ behind something like tears.

“Here you are,” Aziraphale says, and Crowley looks up to see him mostly dressed again, a towel in one hand and another jumper in the other. “Don’t catch a chill.”

He takes the towel and scrubs angrily at his shaking hand, takes the jumper too. He shrugs into it and can feel his arms shaking, his chest shuddering, and he hates it, _hates it_ , wants to pull the skin off of himself and slide into serpent form, hide away in a tree.

“I think— I think I should go,” he says, and fumbles for his trousers.

Aziraphale turns around and looks shocked, confused, _frightened_.

“Oh. Of course, yes,” he says, and is already mostly dressed.

He shivers a hand through his hair and pulls it out of its elastic, yanks the zipper up hard on his jeans. He isn’t sure where his keys are, where his shoes went. He knows only that he wants to hide, be alone, _sleep_.

“Please be careful,” Aziraphale says, when he finally locates his keys. “Driving.”

His stomach clenches at the words, at how pathetic and powerless and _human_ he’s become. He closes his eyes, breathes.

“Of course,” he forces himself to say. “Always.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "clean speech" is a take where there were no errors with the recording of dialogue :)
> 
> I love the nice comments you all leave me. thank you so so much <3


	8. double exposure #2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi remember this story?

It has been nineteen minutes and he still does not know what to do with himself. How to hang his arms. Where to put his legs.

Nineteen minutes and he can still hear the echo of the door slam, the musical and all-together too-pleasant tinkling of the bell above it. Can still hear Crowley saying _I think I should go_ , can still hear his ragged breathing, the caustic zip of his fly as he hurried his way back into clothing, as if it would hide or somehow erase whatever had just transpired.

Crowley has always been prickly, has always been guarded. For all his easy smiles and easy jokes there lies underneath a crisp edge of vulnerability, a fierce watchdog of his truest self. Aziraphale has seen it— a few times— in moments of desperation where the edge comes into creeping focus, the shield gets burnt away.

He had seen it once, in St. James’ park, a whispered confession and the underhanded passing of a note like children under the watchful eye of a teacher. His reaction had been knee-jerk then, a swift unwelcome punch that left his lips and hit Crowley somewhere squarely in the chest if his measured decision to sleep for fifty-some odd years had been any inclination. Aziraphale had never again dared to be so candid with his emotions, not until one particular moment at a particular bandstand nearly six months ago and that unfortunate bit of affectivity that had crept out.

He tries not to take Crowley’s decision to leave so suddenly as a personal affront. _Tries_.

There is a strange stretched feeling to his chest. He feels hollow, spread too thin.

Aziraphale stares at the door, then the floor, then the vacant stretch of carpet where they had been not a half-hour ago. There are still indents in the rug from the press of Crowley’s knees, a suspect bit of dampness on one of the pillows.

The asymmetrical stain summons up a memory of Crowley’s hand, hovering mid-air, disgusted— just enough of a post-coital slap in the face that Aziraphale had not known what to say, how to react to the sight of his own ejaculate on his best friend’s fingers.

He isn’t sure where to look, what to do. His arms feel like they belong to someone else. His stomach rumbles but not in hunger.

He knows only that Crowley is currently driving himself across London in a car that will no longer veer around pedestrians and he has a vision suddenly of him reaching for his phone, toggling with the music— that insufferable bebop— driving unconsciously into a pole or a building or a person.

He lifts a hand to his throat and closes his eyes, can see only blood on the bonnet of the Bentley, a broken steering column, quarter-lights cutting into increasingly mortal flesh.

He rubs a thumb into his throat and tries to reassure himself that Crowley has been driving for nearly one-hundred years and he knows what he’s doing. He’s fine. He’s _safe_. Aziraphale opens his eyes.

He _has_ to be.

The urge to run out of the bookshop is immediate and intense. He has no car, a taxi might not take the same route. He’d have to walk, run maybe— although the recent memory of trying to jog and keep pace with Gabriel leaves him skeptical of his ability to uphold such a pace.

“I’m being ridiculous,” he chides himself, and decides that it will be silly to leave. How ridiculous. Crowley had only just left and to show up at his flat without an excuse after his frantic exit would clearly not be the right move.

He paces. He closes his eyes again. He imagines what it would be like to talk to a police officer at the scene of a crash and then realizes with near immediacy that it is very likely he would not get a phone call. Crowley has no next of kin. Aziraphale is not his emergency contact.

He could be plastered on the street and Aziraphale might not know until the following morning, reading the press, sipping his coffee. He might overhear someone talking on the pavement about an antique Bentley that had wrapped itself around a streetlight, about the strange eyes belonging to the single fatality.

Aziraphale opens his eyes and straightens his clothes, endeavors not to give in to the avalanche of anxiety, tries to remember what it is that he used to do before all of this, any of this. Something to straighten out his mind.

Reading, he supposes— he used to read. He used to walk Soho and take himself out for lunch. He can clean his flat, he can shop for groceries. He can reorganize and alphabetize the shelves. He can make tea and sit in his armchair and perhaps even reopen the shop— it isn’t even past midday.

But he imagines the footprints of strangers standing on those marks where Crowley’s knees had been, thinks of what the shop must smell like— sex and old books and regret, the lubricant that is still smeared between his own thighs— and his throat seals itself closed, reminds him of the broken hang of Crowley’s shoulders in a jumper that had been too big for him, the movement of his Adam’s apple in a strained neck.

Twenty minutes and he eyes the unfinished books on the three-legged table, twenty-one minutes and he re-buttons the seven polished ones on his waistcoat. Twenty-two minutes and he cannot get the sound of Crowley’s moans behind him out of his head, the way his voice had dropped into a yet-unheard octave in his ear, had murmured something that sounded a lot like _sweetheart_ against his neck.

The hairs on the back of his neck stand up. The stretched terror of vacancy in his chest grows. He considers that perhaps he had imagined it, perhaps it had been an overactive mind or maybe just Crowley’s overactive mouth. It does not mean anything. Crowley had not meant it. He couldn’t have. Not judging by the way he had become so instantly barbed afterward. How he had held his hand up disgusted by what was on it. How he had left so quickly after.

Aziraphale sits down and then immediately stands up again, uncomfortable in his own home. He takes off his housecoat. Puts it back on.

He stalks over and grabs a book with a measure of authority, thumbs open the cover. And then he drops it as if it burns, abruptly incapable of bearing the thought of sitting idly while Crowley’s heart pumps increasingly-human blood, while those lungs work to breathe actual air. He cannot find it within himself to sit and listen to the damnable clock on his mantle ticking down minutes when Crowley has so precious few of them left.

So he straights up the floor, moves the sofa back into place. He caps the tiny plastic bottle and places it gently on the coffee table, houses the betamax in its shipping box. He hides the erotic tapes, the overstuffed pillows, gathers up the jumper Crowley had used and discarded on the floor.

It smells like him, the faintest bit— from the deodorant Aziraphale had purchased him and also from the sweat he’d clearly poured into it and from the hastily cleaned evidence of an act that seems surreal in its memory.

He brings it to his face for a moment, then drops it, remembering all at once the way Crowley had felt inside him— hot and huge and _too good_ and _more_ than that the feeling of his hands on his hips, that kiss he had pressed to the back of his shoulder.

He closes his eyes and breathes, blood rushing into his cheeks and there is still slickness between his legs that he wants to hold onto forever, the memory of Crowley’s fingers pressing errantly against his thigh and—

Aziraphale exhales, opens his eyes. Remembers the pure boiled fear on Crowley’s face and his hesitancy to touch him, the way he had pulled out when he had come and maybe he hadn’t lasted very long because he hadn’t _wanted to_.

He rolls the jumper into a ball in his hands and heads toward the stairs, climbs them thoughtlessly. He’s a bit sore between the legs and a bit wobbly about the knees, from the recent orgasm or the memory of Crowley he cannot tell.

His bedroom looks the same and he eyes it with a thinly veiled hope, looking for something out of place, something to mark that Crowley and his chaotic energy had been here, had touched his bed perhaps or thumbed along the dust on his dresser.

But he hadn’t, and the only difference resides in his bathroom— in the sudden presence of toiletries Aziraphale had purchased and a bath towel that is speckled with red dots of blood.

He gathers it up too and deposits it in his laundry bin along with the soiled jumper, takes another look around his bathroom.

There are still water droplets in the bathtub, still rivulets running down the shower curtain. There are a handful of copper hairs in his drain, on his otherwise pristine sink, fine and few and he leaves them there, desirous of at least part of Crowley staying.

He turns on the tap and decides that holding on to things that are clearly not meant for him will not be a service that he will entertain. He did not do it before Armageddon and he will not do it after. Not with work to be done and time ticking down and Crowley across town hopefully safe in his flat, steadily turning human.

He needs a clear head and clean clothes. He needs to remove the emotionality from himself. He needs to slow down his breathing and then take himself to Mayfair. He will not allow himself to panic at what he might find on the streets.

So he undresses himself slowly, deliberately, waits for the water to heat. Steam fogs the mirror and he steps into the spray, soaps up between his legs. Something seems to stick in his throat as he does, as if he is washing away a very important memory that he will not be able to get back. But he consoles himself with the knowledge that they’ll have to do it again, many more times if Crowley has any desire at all of living.

He stops, drops the soap.

The consideration that Crowley might not wish to continue slams into him somewhere just north of his heart— that there is the very real possibility that Crowley could call the whole thing off, accept mortality, lie down. Considering their last interaction and the way he had not been able to leave fast enough, his clear disgust with Aziraphale’s spend on his hand.

And then— the lubricant on his thigh, the errant hand that had pressed it there because he had not been looking. At the time Aziraphale had assumed Crowley to be nervous, or perhaps just inexperienced. But that _couldn’t_ be, he thinks, bending down to retrieve the soap and scrubbing his way up his legs, his knees, his hips— Crowley is a _demon_ , he had performed _literal temptations_ for thousands of years. He soaps ever more vigorously between his legs, up onto his belly.

Crowley had tempted Jesus himself in the desert. He had overseen orgies, had probably, most likely, _definitely_ taken part in them. He could not be inexperienced. He could not have been nervous.

Aziraphale places the soap back in its tray and stares at it, lets the spray of shower water beat between his shoulder blades. 

And then he fumbles and turns off the tap, stands dripping in the shower. There is a foreign emotion churning in his stomach, something that rises like bile in his throat. The thought of Crowley touching someone else— those long-fingered hands sliding between someone else’s legs, _looking_ at them, watching the whole time when he couldn’t bring himself to even _look_ at Aziraphale— he chokes back something like a sob, catches himself on the wall.

Heat flares under his skin. He wants to take it off and throw it over the radiator, shrug out of it like a coat.

He grabs for a towel and scrubs roughly at his skin, endeavoring not to cry, trying to ignore the fierce burning that has erupted in his throat. There is the rising desire to smack himself, to perhaps open his wings in this tiny bathroom and remind himself that he is an _angel_ — he does not feel baser emotions like this one, like _jealousy_. He should not be jealous. Jealousy is reserved for humans and their mayfly lifespans, for beings that do not get to live for thousands of years. If he gives into this one he will be plagued by them eternally— how many first-times had he missed out on with Crowley? The first time he had tried food, the first time he’d been drunk, the first time he’d gotten high. There had been a multitude of _firsts_ that they had _both_ missed in their time on earth together. This one is no different, he tries to remind himself. This one, _virginity_ and the concept thereof is _meaningless_.

He steps out of the shower and is comforted with the knowledge that perhaps Crowley had not known it to be his first time. Perhaps he had played it convincingly off. He presses the towel over his frantic heart and sticks his nose down into it, inhaling the smell of his laundry detergent. No one will ever have to know.

He looks up, stares at himself in the mirror.

Through the fogged reflection he can see pale hair, pale skin, dark moments where his eyes might be. He reaches forward with the intent to wipe away the steam and then thinks better of it, enjoying being unseen, even by himself.

There is the rhythmic dripping of the shower tap behind him, a few copper hairs cling to the porcelain basin of the sink. He traces a finger around them and runs his fingers reverently over the summit of Crowley’s toiletries.

Their toothbrushes face opposite directions in their jadeite cup, criss-crossed at the handles. Aziraphale stares at them for a long moment, and then reaches forward and swivels their heads around, letting the bristles kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry I had to take a lil mental break. I'm back tho!


	9. edge of frame

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for the patience on this. life is wild.

Crowley cannot get the tap hot enough.

It is his second shower in about as many hours but he tries not to think about that, scrubbing at his skin with a brush until it turns pink and vulnerable, until he stress cleans his own exterior to the point of near bleeding.

Water beats down on the back of his neck and he leans headlong into the glass wall, lets it soothe the persistent ache in his permanently ruched up shoulders. He attempts to steady his breathing, watching with steadfast detachment at his breath fogging up the glass shower wall.

He hadn’t been able to find parking. A nearly hour-long drive around his flat had awakened in him a sudden appreciation for demonic integrities to affect the world around him. He had never really considered what it would be like to arrive at a place and for there to be nowhere to leave his car.

He’d never had to actually _search_ for parking. It had always just appeared, right in front of his front door, no matter the time or whatever other event was occurring in Mayfair. Parking tickets did not exist in Crowley’s mind except in the form of shrewd demonic annoyances that happened only to people other than himself.

It shouldn’t be the thing that breaks him, he thinks, staring at the wall and raising a hand to smear a lopsided capital _A_ in the fogged glass, but it apparently is.

He looks down at himself, the sharp lines of his torso and the angled jut of hip, the thighs that had very recently been butting up against the back of Aziraphale’s.

There is a strangled whimper that escapes his throat and he squeezes his eyes closed, doesn’t allow himself to panic. He fumbles blindly for the soap on the wall and thrusts it between his legs, scrubbing away for perhaps the third time whatever remained of lubricant, ejaculate, angel— as if he could remove by surfactant a memory he feels guilty about keeping.

“Stop fucking panicking you git,” he murmurs to himself, the audible sound of his own voice echoing foreign in his ears, a void given a body that it desperately did not want. He looks down at himself, at the sex he is now incapable of changing, human and cemented into permanence.

The tap, belonging to an address that _only just_ began paying for its hot water, abruptly gives up its heat.

Crowley yelps under the frigid spray and bats the faucet closed, stands dripping above the drain, staring down at his feet in a vacant wonder.

His pubic hair is already growing back from where he trimmed it down and he scowls at the shock of absurd brightness, the persistent ability for increasingly human bodies to keep growing and moving and changing. He cut his nails just four days ago and yet he finds them annoyingly long. His chin from just this morning is already growing rough with newborn hairs.

He steps out and dries himself off and stares at his sink, at the lack of toiletries, no toothbrush. He opens his medicine cabinet and there is nothing there save for a handful of fertilizer spikes for his plants and a nearly empty carton of cigarettes, no lighter.

It occurs to him that he will have to take himself out to a… a pharmacy. The word feels strange in his head. He has been inside of them, obviously, but usually with Aziraphale while the angel shopped for unnecessary vices— he had never actually purchased something for himself.

Indeed _all_ of his shopping until this point seems to have left him feeling woefully inadequate for the task. It had always been brief forays into chocolate shops for Aziraphale, liquor stores for the two of them. It had never been into a _Boots_ , that place with items for mopping up and plugging up those myriad human effluviums, razors, soaps, sunscreens. Humans, Crowley had determined, are bags of jelly just waiting for the opportunity to ooze.

He closes the cabinet and scrubs at his hair with the towel. His skin is pink, everywhere, an annoyingly vulnerable shade that highlights his lack of hair and the unwanted places where it is already growing back.

He takes himself to his bedroom, finds a frustrating lack of clothing in his drawers. He had never considered saving them let alone purchasing such objects. He would simply banish them in the evenings and summon them again in the morning, a ritual that had become so second nature that he found himself in the mornings waving a hand over himself instinctually.

He looks down at the balled up jumper in his hands, the one that so very obviously did not belong to him.

He unfolds it, lays it out on his bed.

It is the approximate size and shape of Aziraphale, wrinkled where he had creased it in his hands, disgustingly beige. He smoothes a hand across the pulled thread along the edge, wonders if he’d been responsible for it. There is a strange impulse to lay himself flat along its edges, to lie between its arms as if its owner were still inside of them.

And then he pushes that impulse down, slips it over his head again— too big and too boxy and smelling ever so faintly of Aziraphale’s laundry detergent, a top note of _bookshop_.

He slumps down on his bed and stares vacantly up at the ceiling, not understanding how he both wants to be with Aziraphale and to never see him again.

His eyes slip close, his stomach growls. There is a hunger pain there, a loneliness too.

Crowley decides not to think about it. He sits himself upright and wraps the towel around his waist. He stands up and does not think about those lovely dimples on Aziraphale’s back. He takes himself out to the kitchen and does not consider whether Aziraphale had scrubbed himself to an impossible pristine beforehand or if he existed in a perpetual state of perfect cleanliness. He opens his cabinets, definitely does not wonder whether Aziraphale had been faking his reaction.

There is nothing in the cabinets. There is only slightly more in the fridge.

There is alcohol and the memory of Aziraphale’s thighs, the lines that stripe up the inside of them. There is a block of cheese and regret.

Crowley slams the door closed and leans his forehead into it, remembering how Aziraphale had clenched underneath of him in sudden shock, even pain maybe, urging him to not stop despite whatever piss poor job Crowley had done preparing him. And of _course_ he wouldn’t. The angel clearly wanted it over with— all of it. Any opportunity to turn the damned darling camera on was seized with a pathological efficiency. He is vaguely surprised Aziraphale hadn’t turned it on him in the shower, filmed his impromptu shaving lesson.

Crowley breathes out through his nose and opens his eyes, takes himself back into his bedroom. The rumpled jeans that had seen him, somehow, through a blow job and two showers and one very quick round of actual sexual intercourse of the anal variety are balled into a mangled black heap on the floor. He considers briefly whether or not he will have the hot water necessary for yet another shower after shimmying himself into them and realizes he doesn’t have a choice anyway— they are, after all, his only pair of trousers.

His stomach still growls, his teeth feel sticky and like they need to be brushed. He threads the jeans back up and onto his legs and then he yanks up the zipper, realizes that he will be wearing Aziraphale’s jumper out into the throngs of humanity, this beige monstrosity, this most hideous and delightful and perfect of pieces of clothing.

He sits down on the bed, gathers the fabric in his hands and buries his nose into it, chin to chest. And then he jerks himself upright, embarrassed or annoyed at his own sentimentality, his own lack of clothing. He tugs on a boot, then another one, reaches for his keys on the bedside table. He looks down at the Bentley’s ignition key dangling next to those of his flat and realizes that if he drives anywhere he will have to once again find parking, a realization that leaves him desirous of taking the key off the chain and throwing it into his toilet.

He takes a long glance down at his feet in his boots and wonders if he should put socks on— and then figures he’s fine, it can’t be too far of a walk, what’s the worst that could happen?

* * *

It turns out that blisters bear a shockingly similar pain profile to walking on consecrated ground.

“Fuck, fuck, _fuck_.”

He breathes out the words in sharply articulated syllables, biting on them as if they are a leather strap.

The key to his flat is slippery in his grip, slicked by sweat and trembling hands, bogged down by arms holding far too many carrier bags.

“Would’ve been nice to have a _bloody_ car,” he mutters, kicking the door open finally with a bit more force than necessary.

He drops the multitude of bags, drops himself to the ground too. And then he tugs off his boots and clips out another string of tightly muffled profanities, kicks them away until the offending shoes have been corralled into a corner.

He looks at them with distain and spares a glance down to his heels, his pinkie toe. The skin is pink and raw and looks as if it’s about to bubble and he realizes at once that despite his love of grotesque body horror films the visual of such things in the non-abstract is disgustingly unappealing.

Without having a Cronenberg appreciation for his own increasingly human body’s weeping sores, he decides the best course of action is to ignore the offending flesh and so he hauls himself to his feet, gathering up the bags and feeling all at once a great pang of regret for all of the petty annoyances he had parlayed onto unsuspecting humans for so many centuries.

Coins on the sidewalk, disabled phone lines, no parking spaces. He had untied shoelaces and altered the height of stair risers. He had turned unripened fruit rotten before its time— rock hard to stinking mush— and had made perfectly sealed containers of beer go off without a second glance.

He empties out groceries into his cabinets, his refrigerator, turning to face all the labels out. And then he takes himself over to his bedroom, upends the entire pharmacy purchase onto the mattress.

There are bottles and potions and creams. More packaging than Crowley thinks necessary. There are certain implements of cleanliness he had frantically Googled in the back of the store that he then hurriedly stashed in his shopping basket— a move that left him slightly paralyzed by his own embarrassment. The pile of objects reminds him somewhat of a plasticine vision of the Spanish Inquisition, his self-inflicted torture devices in a hermetically sealed heap.

He picks up one particularly evil looking box and stares long and hard at the benign and downright feckless front packaging, appreciating in the abstract how wildly blasé it managed to be. He tosses it back on the bed and then begins organizing where his suddenly grand number of personal grooming supplies will house themselves, wonders whether he should hide his more embarrassing items somewhere less out in the open. In a locked box under his bed perhaps. Or in the safe in his office that once held a thermos full of holy water.

Crowley stops and looks down at his hands, which have, for some undigested reason, begun to shake somewhat uncontrollably. He buries them in the pile of objects, sorting forcefully through his purchases in an attempt to conceal the emotion. He lines them up on his bed and sorts them based off of their future resting place: shaving cream, a razor, more soap, a two-pack of toothbrushes because the damned things apparently only come in emotionally inconvenient dual packaging, a box of gloves, more lubricant, a bag of crisps he had grabbed in an attempt to cover the items underneath as if the cashier wouldn’t notice, the aforementioned torture device he will not bring himself to name.

He dutifully stores them. He does not lock anything in the safe. He reasons with himself that he lives alone, and no one will see the implements of his shame, and for some reason that thought above all the others rises up and sticks in his throat.

He moves himself back into his bedroom, allows his body to curl into a small and hopefully near invisible speck on his bed, amidst the empty carrier bag and the package of unopened crisps.

He is still hungry, and still wearing the beige monstrosity, and still sore in some place that he shouldn’t be. It is still daylight outside but he feels exhausted so he closes his eyes, figures a few moments of resting will do him no harm, and tries not to beat himself up too badly when the first thing he thinks of when he closes his eyes is Aziraphale.

* * *

He is having a very pleasant dream. One where he is managing to make a particular principality say certain profanities over and over again in various stages of breathlessness using only his penis. A fun party trick, his dream self realizes.

At some point the profanities sound less like _fuck_ and more like a _knock_ — a sound that reverberates even in his dream.

He opens his eyes to find himself outrageously overheated and more than a little groggy, a feeling like his head has been stuffed with cotton. He is sweaty in places he shouldn’t be.

And there is, he realizes dimly, an actual knocking at his door.

He pushes himself up off the bed and sways a bit, catching himself on the lintel of the door. The beige monstrosity is trapping the humid air of his nap against his skin and he has half a mind of taking it off, throwing it on the floor.

But there is without a doubt a persistent and increasingly frenetic knocking at his door that he must see to— _clothed,_ considering the state of society these days— most likely an overachieving worldwide express delivery person hellbent on getting a signature.

His damned boots are still piled up in the corner and he sucks his teeth at them, yanking the door open to find the sky completely dark and also… _Aziraphale_. Seeing him feels remarkably like getting punched in the stomach.

He blinks, jerks his head back, opens his mouth.

“What the deuce are you doing here?”

Aziraphale’s hand is still raised mid-air, hovering, the fingers curling back in on themselves in a soft fist.

“I—“

Aziraphale looks suddenly uncertain, as if he is not aware of what the deuce he is doing here himself. The last several hours of Crowley’s life seem to slam into him headlong through the grog and he blinks, heat rising to his ears.

“I came to check on you,” he can hear Aziraphale saying but along with it the memory of moans he had voiced earlier, the smell of him along the back of his knees, that keening noise he had made under Crowley’s less than spectacular touch.

“ _Jesus_ ,” he mutters to himself, and grabs onto the frame of the door.

“Are you quite alright?”

There is a hand steadying him on his arm and Crowley looks over at it, aware that he is wearing the damned beige monstrosity still— the same trousers that had seen Aziraphale’s bookshop floor _twice_ today.

“Fine,” he says, and shrugs out of Aziraphale’s hand. He can feel his face heat, his skin seems to prickle under more than just sweat. “I was sleeping.”

“Oh, I’m dreadfully sorry I should have phoned you it’s just that I was in the area and I thought you might—“

“—S’fine. Come in.”

Crowley steps back into his flat without another word, stepping over the carrier bags that hadn’t required refrigeration or immediate concealment, figuring that if the angel was going to so obliquely lie about being _in the area_ he might as well let himself in.

“I— I can leave if you’d rather get back to rest,” Aziraphale is saying behind him.

Crowley dips into his bedroom on the way to the kitchen and nabs the bag of crisps, closing the door behind him on the way out. As if doing so will somehow prevent Aziraphale from knowing what had been laying on his bed at one point.

“Oh.”

He can hear Aziraphale stop in his hallway, knows that he is looking at the sad state of his houseplants, the Norfolk Island Pine with its crisped needles and the finicky Majesty Palm that cannot decide whether it wants sunlight or shade.

“Mind the gnats,” he calls over his shoulder, abruptly out of shits to give.

There is the distinctly bright yellow taste of sunshine in his mouth, a smell in his sinuses like spring.

He parks himself up on the ledge of his kitchen counter and opens the bag, embarrassed but too tired to do anything about it.

“You didn’t have to do that,” he says, as Aziraphale finally enters the kitchen.

There is a basket under his arm, one he hadn’t noticed until just now, tucked up and nearly matching the beige of his coat.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Aziraphale says stiffly, and sets the basket out next to him on the counter.

“I may be turning—“ the word _human_ sticks in his throat so he just swallows it down and ignores it, “—I can still smell a not-so-minor angelic miracle, you know. I’ve been around them long enough.”

He can see Aziraphale tongue at his teeth and purse his lips, a look he has not seen on his face in what feels like ages. It cracks open some part of him he hadn’t realized had been closed.

“I thought perhaps you’d be hungry,” Aziraphale says, ignoring the fact that Crowley had caught him miracling his houseplants back into a state of angelic perfection. “Have you eaten dinner yet?”

Crowley holds up the bag of crisps.

Aziraphale looks between it and his face and back again.

“Those do not contain adequate nutrition,” he says flatly.

“Tastes good though.”

“I brought you some food— dinner— if you want it,” Aziraphale continues, almost nervously. He pulls out various containers and shuffles them into a line on the counter as if suddenly uncertain of the gesture. “And— wine, of course. Although you really should eat a solid meal before you drink and I hope you’ve been drinking enough water it is _very_ easy to dehydrate you know.”

“Hey,” Crowley says softly, confused by the utterly altruistic nature of Aziraphale’s picnic and not understanding why the angel is so bloody nervous. He looks ready to jump out of his own skin. “Thanks,” he finishes, aware of how much the word means and how little he ever actually says it.

Aziraphale hovers silently next to him, looking down at his hands and the myriad containers, then sets to work opening them, grabbing for the wine as if he desperately needs a drink.

“I’ll open that,” he says, and reaches for it.

Aziraphale finally meets his eyes as if to comment on Crowley’s need to eat food before imbibing but then apparently thinks better of it, his mouth sliding closed and transmuting into a tight smile instead.

Crowley slides himself off the counter and gets busy finding the corkscrew, pushing down against those same intrusive thoughts he had battled against this morning: the dimples on Aziraphale’s back, above his hips, the sounds he had made into the carpet, the taste of his moans.

He peels back the foil, twists the corkscrew down.

Aziraphale is steadfastly silent, busy with wrangling plates out of his cupboard, utensils out of his drawer. It is an intensely domestic and comfortable thing— that the angel knows where he keeps his favorite plates, how he prefers to use the long-tined forks.

He shimmies the cork free and watches Aziraphale as he portions out some sort of pasta, vegetables, far too many green things.

He wonders if there is still lubricant smeared between Aziraphale’s legs and then chokes on his own spit.

“Oh heavens. Are you all right?”

Crowley waves him off, blinking the tears out of his eyes.

“Fine,” he squeaks.

His face is probably as red as the tomatoes on their dinner plates. He tries valiantly not to look at anything below Aziraphale’s elbows.

“Drink something.”

“I’m _fine_.”

He pours himself water out of the tap anyway and drinks it.

“Eat,” Aziraphale says, when he’s finished with the water, and slides the plate across the counter.

“Drink?” Crowley asks, and pours the wine without waiting for an answer.

“Definitely.”

They both down a healthy glass despite Aziraphale’s instructions to consume food first but the transgression goes without comment. It appears that the awkwardness of their encounter is requiring the balm of alcohol.

It feels as though they are both walking on ice, or perhaps tiptoeing around a dangerous and sleeping animal.

“How are you--” Aziraphale pauses mid-sentence, seeming to chew on his next word, “feeling?”

Crowley bites the inside of his cheek, certain that Aziraphale is aware of his word choice— the bastard. He is starting a conversation but putting the ball very firmly in Crowley’s court.

“I’m… okay,” he says honestly. Because _okay_ seems to brush across the number of different emotions he is feeling. Regret, exhaustion, a deep unabiding sadness, frustration— but at least he isn’t hungry. “This food is really good. You know, for being so… _green_.”

“Green things are good for you,” Aziraphale says into his plate.

“Are you…” Crowley trails off and waves his hand between them as if that explains anything. Aziraphale looks at him owlishly across the broccoli. “Okay?” He finishes. He isn’t sure himself what he’s asking but Aziraphale seems to have made up his mind about it.

“A bit sore, you know, between the legs,” he says, with the kind of nonchalance that gives Crowley whiplash and leaves him wondering what kind of dangerous sleeping animal they had been sidestepping around if not _this one_.

Crowley opens his mouth, closes it, can feel his face growing hot.

“I— uh, sorry,” he mumbles, and stuffs a tomato in his mouth.

Aziraphale shifts back and forth on the counter stool.

“To be expected really,” he says. “It’s really not a— a _bad_ thing.”

The food that had once tasted quite vibrant and good has quickly transmuted itself into a tasteless lump, something that he is finding spectacularly difficult to swallow.

There are exactly fifty three things that Crowley can think of that he wants to respond with but the unfortunate one that rises to his mouth first is:

“It’s _not_?”

Aziraphale blanches, as if he wasn’t expecting to be called out with a response.

“You know me,” he says delicately, with a breathy sort of laugh behind it, “quite fond of holding onto things.” He says it and then immediately looks regretful, as if he had revealed too much.

There is so much warmth in Crowley’s stomach that he has a sudden spike of fear of whether or not human bodies can expire on account of emotion. He isn’t sure what to say, how to process such a thing, so he gulps down a large quantity of wine in lieu of using his mouth to speak.

“We don’t— it doesn’t have to be awkward,” Aziraphale says hurriedly. “What we’re doing. It doesn’t change anything.”

“I know,” Crowley says quickly. “Nothing at all.”

“As if I haven’t…” Aziraphale trails off and seems to be swallowing, over and over again, “already seen every inch of you anyway.”

Crowley tilts his head and tries to glare glaringly but it is incredibly difficult to do with this many butterflies in his stomach.

“You should talk. Quite fond of bath houses, if I recall,” he manages, swallowing down against the beat of their wings and trying to summon up his usual brand of dry wit.

Aziraphale smiles down at his plate at the memory.

“I do love a good soak.”

There is still, despite the ease of their conversation, a sleeping animal they are tiptoeing around.

“What were in all the bags?” Aziraphale asks. “In the entryway?”

“I have no clothes,” Crowley says, spearing another tomato.

“You… _what_?”

“No clothes,” he says, around a mouthful, delighting in the disgusted grimace on Aziraphale’s face. “Hence why I am still wearing this.”

He gestures to the beige monstrosity.

There is the slightest of falls in Aziraphale’s shoulders, a slight waver in his smile.

“Not that—“ He swallows, “there’s anything wrong with it,” he finishes hastily, not sure why he feels like the world’s biggest dick.

“So you purchased clothing?” Aziraphale says around it, straightening his unused knife and spoon.

“Got groceries too.”

“I hope... you were safe.” Aziraphale won’t meet his eyes, staring down instead at his cutlery. “Driving, I mean.”

There is a spike of agitation that wedges through him at the mention of driving.

“Didn’t drive. Probably will never drive again.”

Aziraphale looks up sharply.

“Why?”

“Took me about an hour and some to find parking today.”

He drains his wine and feels the pleasant blossom of a buzz fully opening. “So I walked to go shopping. And _look_.”

He pulls his foot up to counter level and is rewarded with a horrified expression on Aziraphale’s face.

“ _Crowley_.”

He is immediately on his feet, at his side in a moment.

“Holy— it’s _fine._ Stop fretting.”

“These look _terrible_.”

Aziraphale kneels down in front of him— _blow-job height_ , Crowley’s mind unhelpfully supplies— and holds his ankle delicately in his fingertips.

“This needs to be cleaned,” he says, tilting his head and the foot in his hands. “There’s _lint_ and who _knows_ what else stuck in it.”

“So?”

“It could get infected, you idiot.”

“In theory I know that is a bad thing.”

“Come with me to the bathroom and we can clean them.”

“No.”

Aziraphale looks up at him quizzically.

“ ‘ _No_ ’?”

Crowley swallows audibly, thinking only about how that room contained the implements of his shame. Things to point to his compulsively leaking human body.

“Just— kitchen sink,” he manages.

“Do you have a first aid kit? Plasters?”

“Uh, I think there is one from the early 80s in my cupboard.”

Crowley climbs up onto the counter again and pulls his knees up, toes hanging over the edge of the kitchen sink.

“Warmer,” Crowley directs, watching Aziraphale gesture between cabinets.

There is that taste of sunshine in the back of his throat again, more subtle this time, only a small thing. He watches the distinctly newer-than-1980s-first aid kit as it gets pulled down and wonders if Aziraphale did it on purpose.

The sink gets stoppered and the tap turned on, Crowley silently thanking someone that his hot water is once again in working order.

“Put these in,” Aziraphale says, tapping at his ankles.

He balls his trouser legs up and sinks his feet down into the tepid water, wincing at the sting of liquid on his open skin.

There is the distinct and overwhelming sensation of deja vu. A feeling like the entire earth had just shifted its center of gravity.

“Reminds me—“

Aziraphale bites off the end of his sentence.

“No, yeah,” Crowley says, and tries to swallow down that lump in his throat, that memory. “Me too,” he manages.

He can see the flush on Aziraphale’s ears, across the back of his neck. He stares at it instead of watching the clean pad wash away the lint stuck in his blisters, instead of watching Aziraphale’s hands lifting and inspecting his skin.

“Feels pretty close to those burns back then too.” He tries to laugh. It doesn’t work.

“You—“

Aziraphale stops talking and flexes his jaw, works ever more delicately on cleaning the crud out of his blisters.

“Shit,” Crowley breathes, and closes his eyes. “Stings.”

“Sorry,” Aziraphale murmurs. “Nearly finished.”

He can see his hands moving, lifting his feet out of the sink and drying them off, smoothing some sort of tubed ointment over them. And despite the sharp pain of raw skin being touched and coddled and cared for all he can think about is that those fingers will be touching and coddling and caring for an entirely different part of him very soon.

He feels so weak he could faint. He pushes his tongue into the sharp edge of his incisor and demands his cock stay down, listen to him just this once.

“There we are,” Aziraphale is saying, pulling away to inspect his work, the ridiculously plastered and cleaned and creamed masterpiece.

“Am I even gonna be able to wear shoes with all this?”

He wiggles his nearly mummified foot.

“Try to stay barefoot.”

“But then how will I get to you— to the… to the shop for, you know.” He is suddenly finding it remarkably difficult to speak, his tongue feels huge in his mouth.

“I’ll come here,” Aziraphale says definitively. “In the morning.”

Crowley watches as Aziraphale’s fingers twist against each other.

“There were quite a few things we can do here, if you wish.”

“Yeah, sure. Morning. S’fine.”

That large and sleeping animal between them seems to shift.

“I should— I can get going,” Aziraphale says quickly, pacing back to the counter and tidying up their plates, the containers he had brought, the basket.

“You don’t— you can stay. We can watch the telly if you want.”

He watches the angel’s hands pause, minutely shake, then redouble their efforts, cleaning up the mess.

“I bought ice cream,” Crowley says.

With that Aziraphale sets down the containers, takes a generous inhale. And then he sighs and smiles and slides his eyes up to Crowley’s.

“You’re tempting me, you old serpent.”

The fondness leaks out of his entire face, Crowley feels weak with it. He can see it in the lines around his eyes, the halo of a smile.

“Temptation accomplished then?”

“I suppose.”

“Good because I bought you pistachio and you know how I feel about health foods in desserts.”

He heads to the freezer, digs out the tubs. He rummages around for some spoons in his tiny cutlery drawer and then hips it closed, looking up just in time to see Aziraphale wiping at his eyes, blinking away a not insignificant amount of moisture.

He nearly drops the ice cream.

“You don’t have to eat it,” he says quickly. “I’ll eat it. You can have the chocolate.”

Aziraphale huffs out a laugh and reaches for the pistachio flavor, delicately taking the spoon.

“I’m not watching a horror movie,” he says.

“How about a comedy?” Crowley asks, already having decided that they are watching _The Exorcist_.

“That’s fine.”

So he sits crosslegged on the sofa in his beige monstrosity, wiggling his plastered feet. Aziraphale sits next to him as if he hadn’t been fucked by his best friend on camera that morning.

And at some point after most of a tub of ice cream and a blanket that he doesn’t remember owning being drawn up around him, he falls asleep on a particularly soft and cushy angelic shoulder.

Distantly, in his dream perhaps, he can still hear the noise of the movie playing, the steady breathing of the angel next to him, like the throw of the ocean against the shore.

Some time that could have been hours or days or years later, a hand brushes his hair out of his face, rising him up out of sleep.

“Crowley.”

His name is whispered and he is jostled in the gentlest of ways.

“Let’s put you to bed,” the voice says softly. “Go brush your teeth.”

He blinks his eyes open to find a dark room, only the distant light of the kitchen throwing shadows upon the walls.

“Gotta brush… my chompers.”

The hands holding him upright squeeze, let go.

“Yes, you do. Let’s go, dear.”

He regains considerably more alertness in the bathroom, in the bright light. He blinks at himself in the mirror and squeezes his eyes closed, wrenches them open.

He fumbles for the toothpaste, the toothbrush, aware that Aziraphale is behind him somewhere in this most intimate of rooms but if the angel sees the second toothbrush he does not mention it.

“Shoo,” he waves a tired hand at Aziraphale hovering in the doorway, after. “Gotta piss.”

“Charming,” is the muttered response but the door closes anyway.

He is fairly certain his aim is off but the exhaustion forces a truly frightening level of _not caring_ out of him. He is still getting a hang of the plumbing situation, he levels at himself, he can forgive some messes.

He pulls the door open and is surprised to find Aziraphale directly on the other side of it.

“I’ll walk you out,” he all but slurs. “Mostly awake now.”

“No— I can— it’s fine,” Aziraphale says, not quite meeting his eyes. “You should just— get in bed. You know. I can see myself out.”

Crowley leans against the bathroom doorjamb, his eyes feeling heavy.

Aziraphale is bathed in the white light of the room behind him, a brightly lit cut-out against the darkened flat beyond.

“I’m glad,” he says, “that you won’t be driving.”

“Mm, what time tomorrow?”

“Call me,” Aziraphale says. “When you wake up.”

“Promise not to sleep for fifty years again.”

He can hear, through the hum of his ice maker and the flush of a toilet in another adjacent flat, through the cars outside and the foot traffic on the pavement, the barest hitch of Aziraphale’s breath.

“P— please don’t,” he whispers.

Something warm and soft pushes through his veins, fills up his chest. He wants to kiss him, he realizes, _so badly_. He wants to kiss him and walk him backwards until Aziraphale’s fluffy pale head hits the plaster, cushioned by Crowley’s hand behind it. He wants to throw him against a wall again, fuck him up against it, do it right this time, make it good.

He closes his eyes and reaches blindly for the light switch on the interior of the wall, smashing it down, plummeting them into darkness. As if Aziraphale could really see his desire pumping out of him, as if he could really tell what a pervert and a hopeless wreck he is from one backlit look, one late night fantasy.

“I won’t,” Crowley says, but he’s not thinking about sleep.

“Call me,” Aziraphale says, taking a step back. “I’ll— I’ll be up.”

“You’re always up.”

“You know what I mean.”

He nods as if Aziraphale can see in the dark and then watches as the angel moves down the long hallway, past the suddenly perfect houseplants and the bags full of new clothes, all black.

There is a prolonged pause at the door, Aziraphale testing the lock, and then he opens it, steps through it, leaves.

Crowley stares at it for a moment and then shuffles to his bed, feeling suddenly wide awake. And then in an instant he can taste sunshine in his mouth again, a faint and unpleasant itching along the pieces of him that are hanging on to demonology. He scratches along his skin, blinks against the burning in his eyes.

He sneezes approximately twenty times and throws the blanket over his head, wishing that Aziraphale had a mobile phone so that he could text him a string of agitated and rude emojis and something along the lines of: _wtf, dont bless me u idiot_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the "edge of frame" is where the visual field of the camera stops (and everything else beyond it begins).  
> \-----
> 
> thankfully all of my other projects I was working on are now complete so, here's hoping I have more time for this bad boy. thanks for all the comments, they're getting me through some shit. fuck, y'all are the greatest.


	10. Insert

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I should content warn for general human body stuff in this chapter but I also feel oddly about that. So this is me, content warning for those human bodies and the messes they can potentially make.

Crowley had finally drifted off to sleep sometime when the sun had come up, after a few hours of restless tossing in his sheets, unable to stop wondering whether his morning ring to Aziraphale would count as a booty call.

He had set an alarm, begrudgingly, aware that he had promised Aziraphale that he wouldn’t sleep for another fifty years and had figured that sleeping until noon was pretty damn comparable to a half-century nap in human terms. So at exactly 11:34 AM ( _hell,_ the phone would read, upside down and backward and far enough, he had figured, from noon), Crowley’s phone begins screaming.

He digs his head wearily out from beneath his pillow, the bottom sheet plastered to his face with drool, and flails wildly for his phone. Some muscle memory encourages him to fling it across the room, as per his usual method of dealing with alarms, but he stops himself— suddenly awake with the realization that his phone will now actually shatter if he throws it.

He mutes it, wedges it back under his pillow. And then he sneezes another three or four or seven times with some lingering itchiness of whatever blessing Aziraphale had bestowed on him.

There’s a bit of an ache between his eyes and a disgusting bit of crustiness at the corner of his mouth, a dryness to his tongue. It feels as though he had been desiccated overnight, asleep in a bed of salt. Aziraphale’s warning about dehydration rings annoyingly in his ears and he swings his legs out of bed, trudges himself to the bathroom.

It turns out that his aim _had_ been off— spectacularly so— last night urinating and there is now a disgusting dried yellow line of it directly to the left of the bowl.

“Fucking hell.”

He manages the words around the toothbrush in his mouth, standing naked on the tile floor, regarding the stain as if it some kind of repulsive modern art. He yanks the toothbrush out of his mouth.

“Eat your heart out, Cy Twombly.”

He turns and spits in the sink, rubs his eyes, opens them.

And he is about to reach for the medicine cabinet, get his razor, the shaving cream, when he first sees it— in the mirror— eyes that are not quite his own.

It had taken him a good number of centuries before he had noticed them— _truly_ noticed them. Noticed the unsettling color and the inhuman pupil. How they glowed the same color that infected wounds do, a pustulant yellow, a visual putrescence. He hadn’t known what to do about them— hiding beneath cloaks and head coverings half the time in a desperate bid to shield them and the other half running off alone in the desert, tempting Christ or other mystics, sleeping as much as he could because that simple act left his eyes shielded to others and also from himself. A reprieve where he had no need to hide them.

But despite his aversion to reflective surfaces and his penchant for sleeping for decades at a time he would know his own eyes, obviously, of course— _but these are not it._

They are still amber, yes, but with threads of green shooting through them like invasive vines, brown on the edges sinking in like mud. The vertical black of his pupil is, enchantingly, nearly round.

He blinks. They stay the same. He blinks again.

There is the distinct feeling that he _should_ panic— but the sight of his eyes had never much thrilled him and the change is disarmingly alluring, a lone positive in a sea of discomfort. One part of him he had never been able to change and here it is— changing itself.

He screws his eyes up closed, rubs at his forehead. Aziraphale will most definitely notice and will most definitely lose his mind over it. There will be hysterics and probably, most likely, _definitely_ panic.

He groans and heads back to his bedroom for the phone, aware all at once that he will have to shower, again, maybe twice before he sees Aziraphale and they film whatever horror-show the angel has on his list.

Crowley tries to remember what the hell else is on it: blowjobs had been accomplished and so had Aziraphale’s idea for _penetrative sex on hands-and-knees and carpet variety_. There had been something about _lengthy digital penetration_ and also _bondage_ , an idea he skips over rather quickly because he is beginning to sweat and doesn’t want to think about _why_ , and then roleplaying— an act that feels almost hysterical to even entertain because what had they been doing if not _already_ roleplaying?

He closes his eyes and remembers revealing that they are, in fact, going to take turns receiving.

“Fuck.”

He finds his phone in the rumpled sheets, lets it linger on the only name marked _Favorite_.

“Just a phone call,” he murmurs. “Totally normal.”

His thumb hovers over the capital A of his name, his mouth abruptly dry. And then he pushes down before he can think too much of it, closing his eyes.

Aziraphale picks up immediately.

“Hello?”

“Angel. Hi.”

He can hear Aziraphale exhale unsteadily into the ancient phone receiver. It crackles with static.

“Hello, Crowley. I was— getting quite worried what with the time and—“

“Yeah, sorry, you know. Couldn’t get to sleep.”

“Oh.” Aziraphale has the remarkable ability to extoll actual sympathy and sorrow into his voice with one syllable. It must be an angel thing, Crowley considers. “I’m dreadfully sorry, shall I perhaps bring you over coffee or some other suitably caffeinated beverage?”

Crowley grinds his teeth together thinking about Aziraphale lugging his terrible, burnt, overly-sweetened and creamed attempt at coffee across multiple city blocks to him. He wonders if he owns more than one tartan thermos, how strange it would feel drinking from it.

“Ah, eh, no that’s fine. Listen uh, that’s not why I called.”

It is silent on the line and Crowley pulls the phone away, checks to make sure it’s still connected.

“You there?”

“I’m here.”

“Oh, yeah so,” he swallows and reasons with himself that this is over the telephone, it is _much_ easier than in person. He does _not_ want to do this in person. “You really need to get a mobile, you know,” he spits out, and is appalled when his voice cracks halfway through.

“I—”

“—I just— it would be nice to be able to text you, that’s all.”

Crowley fantasizes wildly about sending Aziraphale a string of emojis in lieu of communicating verbally or textually. At this juncture he might send a snake and a peach emoji with a question mark.

“Well… perhaps. I’ll consider it,” Aziraphale says slowly, and Crowley can hear him breathing. “Is that why you called? Am I still… coming over?”

He needs to fix his climate control, he thinks. It is outrageously warm in his room.

“I… uh, yeah but— but first I need to, you know. _Know._ So yeah. If you could just tell me. That’d be uh. Yeah. Yes.”

Crowley is pretty sure his heart has migrated out of his chest and has hacked into the phone line, he’s fairly certain he can hear it beating there, amidst the static. He hears Aziraphale’s tongue departing from the roof of his mouth with a soft _tch_.

“I— I’m sorry, my dear but I don’t understand what you are asking of me.”

Crowley closes his eyes and leans into the wall until his forehead butts into it.

“Am I still coming over?” Aziraphale asks again. “I don’t have to if you aren’t feeling well although I am getting a bit—“

“—Am I getting fucked today?” He blurts out. “Or you? Just. You know. _Asking_.”

The line goes abruptly silent. He can hear the angel opening his mouth, closing it.

“If you—“ Aziraphale clears his throat, continues on in his typical cadence, “if you would _like_ to be the receiving party I am agreeable to that. It is, after all, on our list.”

Forehead pressed to the wall and eyes still closed Crowley can feel his stomach twisting into knots, his mouth feels dry and he realizes he has not had any water this morning. He clears his throat.

“So— just— is that a _yes_?”

“Erm, yes. It’s a yes. You will be the receiving partner today. If you wish.”

 _Fuck_.

“Okay. Okay, okay, okay, yeah. That’s good. That’s fine. No problemo. None at all. Just uh, so when were you gonna— what’s the plan here? How much time do I have?”

It is, again, silent for altogether too long.

“Do you have customers there? Tell them to shove off,” Crowley says, and his leg won’t stop shaking _why won’t it stop shaking_.

“No,” Aziraphale says hastily, and his voice sounds squeezed out, a rag wrung dry. “No customers. You have… as much time as you need, dear.”

He can hear Aziraphale breathing.

“Give me, an hour? Hour and a half.”

“Of course. An hour and a half.”

“Cool, yeah. thanks. Okay. Uh, yeah. See you.”

He hangs up before Aziraphale has a chance to say goodbye, his leg still shaking, the back of his neck still sweating.

He tells himself in no uncertain terms to get his shit together, to make his fucking bed, eat breakfast, do what has to be done. So he straightens the sheets, stalks out to the shopping bags still quarantined with his turncoat boots, rummages around, finds underpants, joggers.

There are t-shirts but he doesn’t bother with them, aware that he will very shortly be taking the shower to end all showers, once he crams whatever sustenance he can find down his throat and call it _breakfast_.

In the kitchen, he becomes acutely aware that he has no idea how his fancy, overly-expensive chromed espresso machine actually works and so it just _doesn’t_ — refusing to make a cappuccino despite Crowley pushing the button he had always pushed. It gurgles out a stream of disgustingly off-color water and a puff of coffee-ground infested steam.

He pushes it back into the deepest canyon of his counter and eyes it warily, betrayed by yet another item he had previously thought to be on his side of things.

So coffee becomes a distant thought— one that he alleviates with poorly prepared instant porridge the consistency of wallpaper paste, ameliorated with almond milk. He spoons it into his mouth and washes it down with an unholy amount of water, telling himself that he doesn’t need coffee anyway— he’s fueled by anxiety.

And then it’s off down the hallway that suddenly feels too long, his bag of clothing gripped in his hand as if to remind himself that this is fine, this is totally normal, nothing to see here. He chucks it forcefully into his bedroom and then somehow— his feet thankfully moving on account of something other than his consciousness (which is currently doing backflips trying to get out of this, call Aziraphale back, tell him the whole thing is off)— finds his way to his bathroom, to the box he had stashed in an opaque bag behind the towel rack.

He takes it out, throws away the carrier bag it had been hidden inside, reads the straightforward instructions. Then he turns the tap on and attempts to get as close to the package’s suggestion of “body temperature” water as he can, consoling himself with the thought that at the very least his silicone torture device had come in his favorite color: black.

* * *

“Fucking—“

He scrubs his nails, his palms, his hands.

“—disgusting piece of—“

The skin on his stomach turns bright red, the insides of his thighs are shockingly pink.

“—bloody _gross_ —“

He has his razor in the shower and has taken to shaving down the surplus hair that will not, despite his best efforts, _stop growing_.

“—excuse for a fucking—“

Why did it have to grow _on_ the base of the penis there is no rightful reason for hair to grow _anywhere near_ the penis.

“—demon you repulsive—“

And the balls, he thinks, muttering to himself and gritting his teeth in between— no bloody fucking reason for hair to be on _those_ either.

“—no good _human_.”

There are hairs down the back of him, all of him. He looks back over his shoulder as if that will somehow enable him to see his own backside. It doesn’t.

He isn’t sure what to do about it. The razor in his hand glints promisingly in the overhead light, winking at him, tempting him to do it, _shave it_ , go bald.

But then he rubs a hand along his chin at the growth on his neck that had already begun to itch from yesterday and measures whether having that acute kind of discomfort between his legs is worth potentially being a disgusting hairy beast to Aziraphale.

It’s a ridiculous thought.

Of course it’s worth it.

He is about to do it— shave it, all of it— bent over at the waist and staring up at himself from the most unflattering of angles. But then hepauses in slow realization. The hair doesn’t _stop_ , just continues out from between his legs and down and he suddenly realizes how odd it will look to have a clearly demarcated line of where he had stopped putting in effort and where he had started. He doesn’t want to draw _attention_ to his anxiety— doesn’t want Aziraphale to think that he had put actual _thought_ into this. He wants to exist as a being of pure sex appeal, effortless, perfect. One that hadn’t spent twenty minutes filling his lower half with water and expelling it all out, scrubbing it all clean, deciding where to bushwhack and where to stop.

Crowley straightens up, exhales into the steam of his shower, closes his eyes.

It had been obvious that Aziraphale did not have complete anxiety attacks wondering about the correctness or acceptability of his own body hair. He merely exists in a state of soft perfection, lovely and furred. There had been beautiful blond hairs glowing silver on every centimeter of him, swirling patterns of it on the back of his thighs.

But Crowley is not lovely or blond. He is not soft perfection. He is wiry and angular, covered in wildly bright hair the color of shined copper. A color that gathered up its comedic potential and burst into absurdity directly between his legs.

He gives up. Admits defeat. Puts the razor down and leans headlong into the spray, acutely aware of how terrible it is to be human and suddenly regretting having any shitty hand in making it worse.

He can feel the water giving up its heat and he exhales, exhausted, and turns off the tap.

His bandaged feet have taken on water, the plasters having come loose at some point from the barrage of steam and soap. They wave their untethered ends back and forth as he steps out of the shower.

He towels himself off quickly— his hands still shaking somewhat and there is the fine edge of anxiety and anticipation lining up inside of him; a fear that is one part dread and two parts excitement.

Bending at the waist he rips the soaked plasters off his feet, marveling at how the skin underneath is white and wrinkled, a phenomenon he has never quite seen up close and certainly never on himself.

On the sink, his watch ticks by in silence. It is the only wearable object he had ever actually purchased with real human currency and therefore hadn’t dissolved— a ritual he had felt immensely silly about then but is extraordinarily grateful for now. He tilts his head to read its face.

 _Twenty minutes_.

He has twenty minutes. Enough time to scrub the floor of his kitchen again or maybe attempt to fix his espresso machine. Not that he needs the caffeine, he thinks, watching with detached fascination at the way his left hand is trembling— but at least it will give him a distraction.

He turns around, leans back into the sink as he towels his hair dry, surveying the bathroom for evidence of shame. The major offenders have been removed: the box that shall not be named had been put away, carefully hidden, the dried piss stain had been carefully scrubbed clean along with the rest of the bathroom, the capital letter A he had drawn in the steamed glass had been wiped away with a broad palm.

It’s ridiculous, he _knows_ he is being ridiculous— Aziraphale will not utilize his bathroom and even if he _did_ Crowley is not certain whether the angel would even notice if he left a massive black dildo on the back of the toilet, a bottle of lube next to the liquid soap at the sink. Aziraphale is clever and intelligent and brilliant yes, but also could be fantastically unobservant.

Crowley scrubs his teeth again for good measure, staring himself in the not-quite-right eyes the entire time and then blasts his mouth with a wash that feels akin to swishing around Everclear. He briefly considers taking a shot of it.

The hair gets pulled back into the half-bun he is now adept at styling and then he yanks the tags off of his new clothes, figuring that they are a close enough style to what he wore then and besides— they are going to end up on the floor very quickly anyway.

The tags go in the tiny bin and his hands shake. The blistered skin on his feet burn but he doesn’t care. In a very short amount of time he is going to be fucked by his best friend, on his bed perhaps, or bent over his desk, and he cannot seem to shake the dual rise of both heat and dread.

What if he doesn’t like it? The thought rises up in the back of his brain like a tiny coiled serpent. He imagines Aziraphale unable to orgasm, himself coming too soon again. His palms sweat. His mouth goes dry.

He washes his hands for something to do with them and then opens the medicine cabinet, grabs the aggressive looking lubricant, the gloves.

He wonders whether masturbating would have been a good idea— something to take the edge off— considering how quickly things had gone before.

But there isn’t enough time now, he thinks, looking down at his watch again. Seventeen minutes.

In seventeen minutes he is going to be spread across his counter, his sofa, maybe his bed. He does not have a plush enough nap on any of his carpets but he would not say no to being fucked into the hardwood floor.

Seventeen minutes until Aziraphale’s perfectly angelic dick is going to be inside of him and for _someone’s sake_ he is starting to fucking panic.

He wedges his hands into the tiny pockets of his trousers, takes himself out to his bedroom, straightens the sheets into an impossibly crisp plane, wrinkles be damned. He dusts the bedside tables, rotates all of his blessed houseplants.

He thinks about catastrophes, _messes_. A clean up station is in order, he thinks. Or an emergency response kit. A damp towel perhaps. Tissues. Maybe a butane torch so that he can light himself on fire.

He assembles it and places it on his bedside table along with the aggressive looking bottle of lubricant. He stares at it for too long with his leg shaking. And then he forces himself out to the kitchen, to organize the shelves that had been organized the day prior.

By the time there is a knock at his door he has alphabetized his pantry items and is considering taking apart the espresso machine on principle alone. He pauses, heart stuck in his throat, hands wrapped around a particularly ungainly package of pasta in an array of novelty shapes, and listens.

He checks his watch. Aziraphale is five minutes late.

He scrambles for a pair of sunglasses, something to hide his eyes. There is an old pair in his kitchen drawer and as he slides them on he realizes that it has become fantastically difficult to see, everything too dark, the color gone out of the room.

“Fuck,” he breathes, and blinks to adjust his vision.

His front door seems entirely too far away and yet also not far enough, a trick of the light perhaps, or an effect of the angel behind it. He wipes his sweaty hands on his trousers, finally gets to and opens the door.

“Hello,” Aziraphale breathes, and Crowley’s voice catches in his throat.

“Hi.”

He stands blocking the entrance for a beat and then remembers himself, stepping aside to let him in.

“Apologies for being a bit late I— _here_.”

Aziraphale thrusts something warm into Crowley’s hand, a heavy paper cup with a plastic lid.

“I wasn’t about to subject you to— to my coffee. Still haven’t quite gotten the hang of it, I suppose.”

He can see Aziraphale swallowing nervously, his hands coming together and twisting over the plastic handle of the ancient camcorder case.

Crowley looks down at the cup, then up at Aziraphale.

“It’s hot,” he says.

Aziraphale shifts back and forth on his feet, not quite meeting his eyes.

“Marvelous to-go cups humans have invented, haven’t they?”

He is smiling a little too nervously and rocking back on his heels. The air feels like it has abruptly become gelatinous.

“Thank you,” Crowley forces out, although it sounds oddly strangled.

“Oh, it’s nothing.”

There is a hand wave which then gets shuttered and pulled behind his back.

“Come in?” Crowley asks, like they aren’t already inside. “I was just— I was organizing.”

He tries to tell himself to shut up, stop talking— he has the unfortunate habit of firing up his mouth to fill empty silences and then letting it run completely off track like a spooked horse.

 _Don’t talk about the pasta,_ he reminds himself, _don’t talk about the pasta._

“What could you possibly have to organize?” Aziraphale asks, following behind him.

“Pasta,” Crowley spits out, and then bites his tongue.

Aziraphale says nothing, at least, until they arrive in Crowley’s tiny kitchen.

“ _Dinosaurs?_ ”

“Yeah.” Crowley takes the package out of his hands and puts it up on the shelf, nearly misjudging the distance in the darkness. “Thought it was funny, you know? Cause Satan, you know, it was a trick. The dinosaurs.”

Aziraphale pops an eyebrow up at him, the corner of his lip following too.

“Very demonic of you,” Aziraphale says wryly, about as close to sarcasm as he ever got.

“Oh, shut up,” Crowley murmurs, and pushes his glasses up higher on his nose. “You can put that down,” he says, nodding at the case, “looks heavy.”

“Oh.” Aziraphale looks down as if he had forgotten he’d been holding it. “It’s not so terrible.” He places it down anyway and it makes a soft resonant thud, wholly indicative of its substantial weight.

“So… so where are we— what’s the erm,” Crowley can’t quite get his throat to work so he takes a sip of coffee.

Aziraphale bends and unclasps the case and there inside of it is not only the telescoping tripod but also the damnable _list_.

“You brought that,” Crowley says, not a question.

“I did,” Aziraphale mutters, not looking up.

Crowley stares up at the ceiling, tonguing at his teeth.

“You mentioned erm, being _attended to on your desk chair_ ,” Aziraphale says primly, looking up from the list for confirmation.

“I— yes.”

“Would that be agreeable?”

Crowley chews on the inside of his cheek.

“What were you uh— what does that entail, exactly?”

There is the loveliest bit of pink up high on Aziraphale’s cheeks.

“I know we discussed you being the receiving partner but I wasn’t certain if— I don’t wish to _rush_ you if you aren’t— perhaps you can just receive oral sex and some less… major penetrations.”

It feels like he is about to faint and he isn’t sure when he will _stop_ feeling like he is about to faint. If there could ever be a moment when he could just get _used_ to hearing those words come out of Aziraphale’s mouth it would be great if that moment could happen _right now_.

“You want— to blow me,” he says, and wishes he hadn’t.

“And perhaps— er, yes.”

“And perhaps fingerbang me, yes, sure, absolutely.”

Aziraphale is blinking at him and Crowley watches his mouth open and close a few times. The color has gone out of his face.

“Only if that’s what you want.”

He wants to say something like, _I have wanted you to fuck me into the plaster of my walls since I bought the place_ , so he bites on his tongue until he can focus on something else.

“Yeah,” he manages. “That’s fine. If— if that’s what, you know, you want.” He waves an ineffective hand, as if it will somehow diffuse the awkwardness of their conversation.

“Of course. Yes,” Aziraphale softly, and stares down at the list. Crowley can see that his eyes aren’t moving, just staring at a fixed point.

“Do you need anything or…?” He isn’t sure what else he can possibly offer. More ice cream perhaps. Something to balm the absurdity.

“No,” Aziraphale responds, still not quite looking up. The angel’s ears are turning a rather alarming shade of red. “I’m ready when you are.”

“Yes, sure. Let’s just—“

Crowley stoops to close up the case, lift it. He straightens up and nearly leaves his arm attached the case on the floor. The thing is _wildly_ heavy.

“I’ll get it,” Aziraphale says, and has the audacity to heft it with his pinkie finger slightly out. As if he is lifting a teacup.

Crowley has the sudden vision of Aziraphale walking himself across Soho, into Mayfair, stopping for coffee along the way and waiting at crosswalks, carrying an immense weight in one hand and a takeaway cup in the other, intensely unaware of the scientific properties of mass, volume, _weight_.

His stomach twists. He’s about to get fucked by a Principality. An angel of protection that clearly does not abide by the laws of earthly physics and considers physical weight to be something of an afterthought. Crowley has the hysterical thought that he might get snapped in half.

He should probably worry about this. He decides immediately that he won’t. 

“Right,” he says, and it sounds horrifically squeaky. “In here.”

He leads him, somehow, despite the incredible darkness of his flat with sunglasses on, to his office— a cavernous room with a single ornate desk and a single ornate chair.

Aziraphale has seen it before but Crowley doesn’t miss the slight quirk of his lips in amusement, the desire to say something judgmental perhaps bitten back.

“We can—“ He drags his desk forward, away from the chair. “—put the camera here. And… yeah.” He swallows.

Aziraphale sets it up with a strange sort of competency that Crowley finds slightly unnerving to witness. For the last fifty or so odd years he has only seen Aziraphale manage technology that predated the 1920s. He is, by all regards, a living anachronism. And now here he is, operating tech only thirty years out of date.

Crowley feels, oddly, _proud_.

“The tape is set to the,” Aziraphale clears his throat, “to the right spot.”

Crowley blinks. That means he had to have watched their last recording or at the very least to have fast forwarded through it. He squints.

“How did you know how to do that?”

Aziraphale is looking studiously through the viewfinder.

“I read the manual.”

“You read the manual.”

“Yes.”

“ _No one_ reads the manual.”

“That’s what they’re _for_.”

“Listen, angel, I know the guy who invented stereo instructions _trust me_ they are not meant to be read. They are meant to be wildly unhelpful and then used to start fires.”

Aziraphale purses his lip and turns to him.

“Geoduck99 was kind enough to include them, water stains and all. It would be a disservice to not read them.” He has the gall to look offended on behalf of their Ebay seller.

“Right, well. Glad you did, I suppose.” He shoves a hand up against his chin and wonders whether he should have shaved.

“We should endeavor to… zoom in a bit,” Aziraphale says. “To hide your feet.”

Crowley looks down at his bare feet, the shiny pink skin where blisters had sprung up and were only just beginning to heal. There are scars on the underside too, swirling burn marks from the closest thing he had ever come to giving a confession.

“Socks,” he blurts out, already halfway out of the room. “I’ll put on socks.”

He is gone before Aziraphale can protest, strangely pleased at getting to use his new purchase _and_ getting to hide those places that Aziraphale had touched once— long before they had ever needed make this tape. He tugs them on in his bedroom, mussing up his perfect bedsheets, and sees next to him on his table the catastrophe kit. His Mess Contingency Plan. There’s another flood of anxiety, another overflow of panic.

He gathers them up in his arms, the towel still damp and dripping as he squeezes it in his arms and returns to the office. Aziraphale doesn’t seem to react to the bounty in his arms, the dripping towel, the box of tissues, the aggressive lube. He blinks at it once and then takes it from his arms, deposits it on the desk.

“Right so,” Crowley says, feet socked and heart pounding, needing to cut through whatever they aren’t saying. “Socks.”

“Socks,” Aziraphale agrees, looking at his feet. He clears his throat again. “Don’t humans usually take those off prior to sexual engagements?”

Crowley looks down at his feet, wiggles his toes.

“Fairly cursed to keep them on,” he considers. “I like it.”

“I _have_ heard that having warm feet is a boon to orgasmic potential.”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”

Crowley scrubs a hand over his face in some sort of borrowed embarrassment.

Aziraphale, seemingly nonplussed, clears his throat.

“Well, I’m— I’m ready— you know, whenever you are, my dear. No rush.”

He watches Aziraphale swallow over and over again, the motion pushing the tiniest bit of extra chin into his bowtie. Crowley has the striking desire to suck on it.

“Yeah,” Crowley breathes. “Ready. Yeah. So. Undress on camera,” he says, not a question.

“Undress on camera.”

“Wait no, you should— you stay clothed.” He closes his eyes and swallows. “No reason for you to— they don’t get more of you,” he bites out.

Aziraphale is looking down at his hands.

“Okay,” he says softly. “I suppose no reason for me to be— yes.”

Crowley’s stomach feels twisted in on itself, a black hole that has turned to devour its own edges. He swallows.

“And just—“ his throat closes up entirely and it takes a moment of staring at the ceiling and forcing it open with a repetitive swallow motion to get it to cooperate. “Just fucking— put these on, okay?” He spits out the words and fails utterly to contain the heat spreading up from his cheeks to his ears, pulling out the gloves from his back pocket and wrenching them into the open space between them.

“I beg your pardon?” Aziraphale asks, looking down at the offered gloves, baffled.

“Please,” Crowley says, and closes his eyes. “Just wear them.”

They are taken from his hand and he does not open his eyes, not yet.

“Why are— Why do you—?”

“I don’t want to—“ Crowley swallows and opens his eyes, looks anywhere but Aziraphale’s face. “I don’t want to get you messy. So if you’re gonna put your fingers in me just _wear these_ , okay?”

“Why would you get me messy?” He asks, and Crowley laments the lack of butane torch in his Mess Contingency Plan.

“Because apparently,” he somehow manages to say, “turning off my power has also turned on some—“ he swallows and steels himself, “rather repulsive human urges.”

Aziraphale breathes and then says delicately, “ah.”

“Yeah,” Crowley mutters, staring at the ceiling somewhere behind Aziraphale’s head. “Sorry. I’m trying to— I’m doing what I can to— You know. Get rid of it.”

He wants to die. It might be easier to just crawl up somewhere and let time ravish him, guzzle the mouthwash on his sink and become mold.

“It’s quite all right,” Aziraphale says softly, and Crowley can feel his heart beat pulsing in his neck. “I am not… disgusted by such things.”

“Well I am,” Crowley says, and tries to swallow around the lump in his throat, turning his face away. “And I’d rather you wear them.”

He tries not to think about the myriad human effluviums he has encountered. Definitely tries not to imagine them on his best friend’s hands.

“If you wish,” he says softly, and Crowley can feel him staring at the side of his face, his jaw. “But I want you to know that I’m not wearing them for me.”

“I don’t care why you’re wearing them just that you are.”

Crowley resolutely does not look at him. His ears burn impossibly hot.

“Crowley.”

His own name comes out in a huff of angelic breath. He does not turn to look at him.

He can feel Aziraphale moving, looking at the gloves in his hands perhaps, shifting on his feet.

“I’ve… I’ve taken care of humans for millennia— plague victims, leprosy outbreaks.”

Crowley flexes his jaw, swallows.

“That’s different. Those were humans. Medical… stuff,” he says tightly, and he wishes that embarrassment were a fatal wound that he would just die of already.

He can see now out of the tiniest corner of his eye that Aziraphale has his head bowed and is staring at the floor, his hands clasped together with the gloves between them.

“I’ve washed your feet,” Aziraphale says softly, and with it the air goes out of the room. “After the Blitz. And… _yesterday_.”

“You did,” Crowley agrees, and can remember the angel kneeling in front of him, soothing the puffed and shiny skin of his bare feet in a basin of water, yesterday in the sink, pulling lint out of open sores.

He does not quite understand why Aziraphale is mentioning it, why he seems personally affronted by such a simple request.

“I admit that I do not enjoy the implications of wearing them,” Aziraphale says stiffly, finally. “But I also hesitate to not comply with your wishes.”

Crowley isn’t sure what to say so he just sucks on the ends of his incisors, flexes his jaw.

And then he gets to watch with a sort of slow horror as Aziraphale sighs and puts down the gloves, shrugs out of his coat, reaches for the buttons on his sleeves.

He is rolling up his shirt, damn near to his elbows in neat and equidistant creases, a careful measurement of folds. When he finishes, a single glove gets slid onto his right hand and snapped around his wrist.

“I’m not happy about this,” he says and Crowley watches him flex his dominant hand in the glove, “but I’ll do it.”

Crowley’s mouth is remarkably free of moisture and he considers again Aziraphale’s suggestion to constantly be drinking water. He nods somewhat helplessly.

“Well then.”

Aziraphale’s hands are on his shoulders, guiding him with the lightest of touches over, in front of his chair. He moves back to look through the viewfinder, adjust the zoom.

Crowley reaches for the aggressive lube, lines it up with the chair leg on the floor. He tries not to think about messes. He has regrets about not shaving every inch of himself.

“Ready?”

It occurs to him that he is remarkably _not-ready_ but he nods again anyway, mutely, and watches as the button gets pressed, as the satanic red recording light glows.

And then Aziraphale is stepping up close to him in one fluid second, capturing his mouth in an effortless and open kiss, their noses bumping together. It’s a shock but also not at all— as if this is what they were meant to be doing all the time and should have already _been_ doing for the last six-thousand years.

His bones lose their rigidity. His knees feel weak.

Aziraphale is making a soft, hungry noise into it, high in his throat, arms coming up to cradle Crowley’s elbows and hold him in place. It feels blissful, easy. Aziraphale’s mouth tastes like some kind of far off sweetness, like a dream Crowley had experienced once that had disappeared too soon. A memory he isn’t sure is real.

There is a hand up by his face and he can feel it, somehow, wedging towards his glasses, as if to remove them. He jerks back and stills the hand, pulls it down between his legs.

Crowley tries not to take it personally that Aziraphale looks _surprised_ at the slight hardness there. He promptly forgets his irritation when the hand over him squeezes.

“Off,” Aziraphale murmurs, dragging his hand up to tug at the hem of his shirt.

He steps backward, the back of his thighs bumping into his chair as he pulls the shirt off, thumbs at his waistband.

“These too?” He asks, and his eyes flick over toward the camera lens.

Aziraphale follows him, advancing, their hands mingling as they toy at his trousers.

“These too,” Aziraphale murmurs, and Crowley finds it far easier to not look at the camera when he can instead look at Aziraphale’s mouth, that velvet place he longed to return to.

The atmosphere feels like aspic again, movements suspended and limbs difficult to operate, thoughts arriving slow. His eyes close and they are somehow kissing again but he isn’t sure who initiated. There is the brief wonder that he had perhaps fallen mouth first up against Aziraphale in a subconscious bid to ignore to camera, or perhaps in some buried realization that he has about five minutes before he inevitably orgasms and with it loses his alibi for kisses. 

He is so distracted by the kissing that he doesn’t notice the slide of clothing down his legs until Aziraphale pulls back, slides down too.

He’s on his knees, hands on Crowley’s naked hips and staring up at him with the widest of blue eyes.

“May I?” He asks, and his gaze flicks down to the cock at near mouth level.

Crowley is aware somewhere that he is nodding although he can’t quite remember giving his head permission to move. And then those hands on his hips push him back into the chair until his legs hinge at the knee, his butt making shockingly cold contact with the seat.

He hisses and then grabs at the armrests, allows Aziraphale to pull his hips forward, lift his knees up. He can think only of Aziraphale lifting the leaden case with his pinkie extended, allowing his own limbs to be arranged. Knees up over the armrests. Socked feet dangling in the air. The desire to curl up into a ball and protect all the soft, squishy exposed parts of himself is an intense and shockingly feral reaction, one he combats by chewing into the meat of his cheek.

“Good?” Aziraphale murmurs, and Crowley realizes that he isn’t looking— not yet— despite the position spreading him entirely apart.

There’s an arc of anxiety that floods through him at the thought and he blinks, swallows, bites, nods.

“Good,” he whispers back.

He watches Aziraphale’s eyes flick down and there’s a pathetic sort of whimper that escapes Crowley’s throat, like the sound of a frightened rabbit. He sucks his lip into his mouth to quell it and then forces himself to look away.

But he isn’t sure where to look— there’s the camera directly in front of him on the desk, and he can see it from the corner of his vision no matter where he turns his head. Closing his eyes, too, manages to make him feel somehow more naked than he already is.

So feet up and legs spread he has no where to look but down between them— to Aziraphale with his shirtsleeves rolled back and a bottle of lubricant in his hands.

His breath leaves him in one shocked wheeze and then he sucks in another inhale, grateful, at least, that he had kept his glasses on. He can feel his dick going soft, the blood rushing to his heart that won’t slow the fuck down, to his face that keeps flushing red and even the spread of skin across his chest is turning an unattractive mottled pink with something like embarrassment.

He hears the cap open, and is uncertain of where to look so he focuses instead on the tip of Aziraphale’s fuzzed ear. There are tiny blond hairs there, catching and holding the light.

He is staring at it so intently that he nearly misses the hand that comes up to wrap around his cock, pulling it forward, stroking it into something approaching stiffness.

“There now,” Aziraphale murmurs, and Crowley isn’t sure if the shitty and decaying foam around the camera mic will be able to pick up such a sound. “It’s okay.”

A kiss gets pressed to the not-quite hard tip of him and then there is the shock of cold lubricant on a warm finger between his legs, pressing. Crowley makes a sort of strangled sound and grabs onto the armrests of the chair so hard he’s fairly certain he can hear his knuckles crack. The finger twists, rubs, electrifies.

It’s ridiculously sensitive. Impossibly so. His toes curl up. His stomach clenches.

“Is this okay?”

He hears it somehow through the immense pounding in his head, through what he is sure is his entire circulatory system’s flow of blood through both of his ears.

“Yes, good,” he manages.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale murmurs, and he looks down to see Aziraphale looking pointedly at his left hand, at where it is still digging into the armrest. He somehow catches his meaning, releasing the chair and bringing his hand up, over, down, finally resting softly somewhere behind Aziraphale’s ear, cupping over those peach-fuzz hairs. It moves into his touch and he is delighted, again, to pet at the softness of those pale curls, to twist his fingers into the shape of them.

A mouth gets pressed up against his tip again, easing soft kisses into the skin. And then the finger he had nearly forgotten about is firm and hot and feeling oddly huge as it teases inside, pulls out.

Crowley lets out an abrupt and massive huff of air, feeling punched. Aziraphale pushes in again and Crowley isn’t certain how far— a centimeter or maybe a kilometer, the feeling so odd and so alien he isn’t quite sure what to make of it.

It doesn’t feel… _good_ exactly. In fact it reminds him far too much of certain biological urges he had only recently begun to experience.

The mouth on him pulls back, perhaps confused at the dwindling blood flow, the softening sex.

“Are you okay?” He whispers, looking up from between Crowley’s knees and another shock of adrenaline and regret course through him— that this isn’t what he thought it would feel like.

“It’s… okay,” he manages, and figures that honesty might actually, finally, be the best policy.

“Oh.”

The ungloved hand pulls away from him and Aziraphale shifts, snapping his fingers, and the satanic red light on the camera dims and goes out.

“You didn’t have to— it’s fine,” Crowley manages, and is trying not to think about the fact that Aziraphale still has a finger inside of him.

He looks _unsettled_ , or deeply, deeply sad and there is a bite of regret in Crowley’s chest that he had chosen now of all times to be honest— despite the discomfort.

“Lets stop— we can… we can do something else.”

He begins to pull away and Crowley reaches down, stills the movement. He had spent too fucking long making sure this would go smoothly this morning he is _not_ about to let something like vague discomfort mess with his plans.

“No,” Crowley manages. “It’s fine. This was— this is _on_ the list so. Just— give me a minute. I’ll get used to it.”

“You shouldn’t have to _get_ used to it I am—“

He looks distressed, no hint of the strong and gentle presence that had lifted his feet over the armrests, of the assured kiss as soon as the camera had rolled.

“—I’m not comfortable doing something you don’t like,” Aziraphale finally says, and Crowley can feel the angel’s pulse where he is grabbing his wrist.

Crowley tries not to think about how he is holding Aziraphale inside of him. To his credit, the finger hasn’t moved.

“I didn’t— say I didn’t like it. It’s just— it’s not what I— I don’t know.”

He gives up talking, he wants to squeeze his thighs shut.

“Don’t stop,” he finally settles on.

“Does it hurt?”

“No. Not exactly.”

He tilts his head back so that he doesn’t have to look at Aziraphale between his legs and then decides that the vulnerable feeling of exposing his throat is somehow worse. So he levels his gaze somewhere between the angel’s collarbones and talks directly to his bowtie.

“It’s fine. Keep going.”

“Are you certain?”

He wishes he could glare at Aziraphale without his glasses on.

“ _Yes_.”

The finger slips free and Crowley opens his mouth to snap.

“I _just_ said—“

“—I’m getting more lubricant, you impatient idiot.”

There is indeed the liquid squelch of Astroglide and then the finger returns, rubbing, twisting, pushing slightly in, pulling slightly out.

“Okay?”

“I’m fucking _fine_. M’not gonna break.”

There is simultaneously too much sensation and not enough. He wonders if he would have enjoyed this more before he had to experience the horrors of a human digestive system and something like sadness spears him in the heart.

“You seem… very _tight_ ,” Aziraphale remarks.

“ _Christ_.” Crowley turns his head down into his shoulder and breathes there. “Thanks?”

“Oh,” Aziraphale flushes a deep and uncomfortably hot looking pink. “No, I only meant— this will feel better if you relax.”

“Relax. Right. Fuck,” he whispers into his own skin, “this is so weird.”

He wants to ask how Aziraphale had managed it. How he had managed to lie back on his elbows and spread his legs, let Crowley fumble between them.

And then it occurs to him, all at once, that it is because he had _done it before_.

Jealousy bolts through him, kicks him in the stomach. Of course he’d done it before. _Of course_. The angel is a bloody hedonist and if his odd practice of dropping sexual facts is any inclination he is also clearly, definitely, _obviously_ well-seasoned.

“Are you all—“

“ _Fine_.”

His heartbeat is too loud. His chest hurts. It shouldn’t. He has no claim over what the angel has been allowed to do with the last six-thousand years. They have a strict policy of not getting too tangled up in each other’s personal lives. It would be too messy. They couldn’t. They _can’t_.

He wonders what the Mess Contingency Plan for _extreme and grotesque shows of jealousy_ is.

There’s more lubricant, more pulling out, more pushing in. It is obscenely quiet in the room and he can see Aziraphale chewing on his bottom lip, staring between his legs. It is, Crowley has decided, an incredibly unnerving experience. He is acutely aware of his skin, all of it, of how the seat of the chair is most likely flattening his rump out into unflattering shapes.

He feels less than. Not enough. What did his other lovers look like?

“I’m not going to ask you if I should stop but—“

“ _Don’t_ ,” Crowley warns, and presses the back of his head into the chair.

There is an unprecedented amount of anxiety about _what_ exactly Aziraphale is looking at. His face is too close. The angel’s eyesight is too good. He might see something undesirable that close up. It might smell bad. He hasn’t shifted once from his place on the stone floor and Crowley suddenly realizes that he should have offered a pillow, a carpet with a suitably high nap, _something_.

“My dear, you’re _tensing_ ,” Aziraphale accuses, and is staring between his thighs like the mystery of the Sphinx is down there, just waiting to be unlocked.

“M’ _not_.”

“ _Relax.”_

“I _am_ relaxed. I’m _always_ relaxed.”

He supposes it feels good. In a strange sort of way. It feels very _hot_ , and not altogether like that _much_ , and he is aching somewhere in his chest at the realization that he had wanted this for so long and it isn’t quite what he had imagined, that Aziraphale did this with other people and it obviously went better than this.

There is no blood in his dick and even less blood in his feet, the angle of the armrests clearly having cut off some sort of circulatory flow. So he leans back further, lifts his socked feet up and plants them regally on the tops of the armrest, grateful, at least, that his fantastic flexibility had remained.

Aziraphale pulls out, adds even more lubricant, as if the stuff is helping, at all, to do anything other than make the sensation feel like an internal slip-and-slide. He pushes back in, slowly, and Crowley can feel his finger curl and press and as he drags it back out there a sudden intense and deep pressure that feels— at last— _good_.

“ _Fuck_.”

Alarmingly good.

Aziraphale pauses and looks up, shocked.

“Don’t stop,” he huffs out. “S’good.”

His hands dig into the armrest, his eyes roll up closed. The finger slides back in, bumps into that marvelous bit of something, pulls back out, repeats.

He can’t quite catch his breath, he can quite still his hips. They are rocking down into Aziraphale’s hand and he is nearly embarrassed by it, flexing and relaxing and feeling, finally, too good to care. He can think only of an apple being cored, hollowed out.

“Holy— _fuck_.”

“It’s good?”

Aziraphale sounds hopeful, earnest even, and Crowley spares a glance beneath him to see that fair head still studying whatever is happening down there.

“Please,” he gasps out. “Don’t look.”

There is the beginning of an argument that dies on Aziraphale’s lips, and then he is pressing his nose up into the base of his cock, breathing in.

“Angel,” Crowley breathes. “Camera.”

There is an almost a shocked pull back, and then the ungloved hand snaps and pulls down a miracle, the red light blossoming awake.

It’s too good, he realizes, dazed. It’s too _soft._ There’s so much lubricant he can no longer feel the ridges of Aziraphale’s knuckles, so relaxed he only experiences sensation in the abstract. Like it’s happening to him by proxy, or somewhere in the distance. 

He throws his head into the high back of the chair, a hand reaching behind him to hold onto the top-rail. He can’t get quite enough air into his lungs with his mouth closed but every time he opens his lips an embarrassingly loud and helpless sound rips out of them. He settles instead for taking gasping inhales and then biting down on his lip.

Aziraphale is pressing kisses into his tip again, tongue coming out and following around the line of foreskin— all of it too soft and too delicate and he has no where to move in this position, spread apart and held there.

“Still good?”

He can hear Aziraphale ask it in the softest of voices, somewhere between his thighs. It’s a ridiculous question— he isn’t sure in what universe his reactions could be interpreted as _not good_.

“Good,” he exhales, and it is suddenly easier to close his eyes in the midst of good sensation. “More.”

And ask for what he wants, too.

Crowley isn’t sure what exactly he wants _more of_ but Aziraphale does not long for instruction, and there is, somehow, both a mouth around him and an extra finger inside of him in short and exquisite order.

“ _Fuck_. Yes. Angel. _Angel_.”

It’s too close, _he’s_ too close— they had managed perhaps one minute of useable film but all the tugging in the world on Aziraphale’s pale curls are apparently doing nothing to clue the angel in. His socked feet are sliding, his knees are starting to hurt. The glasses are sliding down his nose and the muscle around Aziraphale’s fingers is burning, spectacularly so. It is, Crowley realizes in a haze, just the right combination of pain and layered pleasure.

The hand turns, those two fingers press solidly against that place that defenestrates rational thought, turns Crowley’s throat into an instrument.

“Azi— _oh_.”

The syllable gets sustained, held into one wavering note. His fingers are probably too tight in Aziraphale’s hair, he is probably leaving indents on the top-rail of his chair. He can feel the back of Aziraphale’s throat, the gentle press of his fingers, can hear the muffled affirmative sounds of the angel letting him know _it’s ok_ , yes, _want this_.

 _He wants me_.

Crowley’s vision whites out, his muscles flex, squeeze, _release_. It lasts for entirely too long. Something to do with the fingers perhaps, or the slow and ridiculous build-up. 

He becomes oddly aware of his wet cock slapping down against his belly as Aziraphale lets go of him, pulls his mouth away. There’s a turn and a snap and the camera shuts off, the mechanical whirring quiets.

Crowley manages to get his eyes open, feeling wrung out, dry on the inside and spectacularly wet on the outside and considering again that Aziraphale had been right— he really does needs to drink more water.

He blinks and pushes his glasses up and realizes that Aziraphale’s fingers are still inside of him.

“Uh.”

“Are you— sorry I didn’t—“ Aziraphale’s ears turn pink, the blond hair shines white on top of it. The fingers slide out and with them a wave of abrupt panic.

Crowley puts his legs down, closes them, grabs Aziraphale’s hand by the wrist. There is a quick inspection made difficult by his sunglasses and then he peels the glove off of his hand— and looks up to find steady blue eyes leveled at him in frustration.

“No mess,” Aziraphale says.

Crowley balls up the glove in a lopsided sphere of lubricant and rubber, flings it onto the far-off floor.

“No mess,” he begrudgingly agrees.

“And even,” Aziraphale pauses and looks away and if anything his ears appear even more pink than they did a moment ago, “if there _had been_ it would have been _fine_.”

Crowley pulls his knees up to his chest, aware of how very, very naked he is and how very _not_ naked Aziraphale is.

“There’s plenty of soap in the world.”

He blinks and hugs his knees and wishes for the first time today that he could take his glasses off, maybe look Aziraphale in the eye. Pare down another layer between them. Rip it off entirely.

“Oh, shut up,” he says instead.

He grinds his teeth together and feels embarrassed, ashamed, uncertain. He doesn’t quite know where to look or what to do with himself and he wishes that he could snap his fingers and disappear into the spaces between his walls.

He is considering the possibility of ceasing to exist when there is a gentle hand at his knees.

“What’re you—?”

“May I clean you up?”

Aziraphale’s eyes are absurdly and impossibly bright, still looking up at him from the floor. He owes the angel a leg rub, a long sit on a comfortable sofa, perhaps more ice cream.

He nods and shyly parts his thighs, remembering Aziraphale and all of his protective angelic instincts: _It’s okay it’s just me_ and _I’m not disgusted by such things_ and _I’ve washed your feet_ and _I’ll make it feel good_. And he had, always, somehow— despite the horrific circumstances and the mortifying moments of vulnerability. He had never made Crowley feel _less than_ or _not enough_ even when he underperformed or revealed what an awful mess of a demon he actually is.

This is, Crowley decides at once, wildly more intimate than having actual sex. There are no moans to break the quiet, no pleas for _more, yes, there_. There is just the soft sound of a damp towel over slicked skin, the sudden intake of his own breath through clenched teeth, Aziraphale moving his balls out of the way as if _that_ is a completely normal thing to do to a friend.

“Is it— are you sore?”

Aziraphale is back to staring between his legs again and Crowley has a nagging sense of worry that, despite being proven otherwise, there is some sort of terrible mess on the towel. He shifts, unsteady.

“A bit. Not bad.”

He bites the inside of his cheek, feeling like an idiot. He’s a _demon_. He had been forged in _Hell_. He used to be able to drink boiling water and walk straight into bonfires. He used to lick unidentified toads on full moons and then chew on broken glass for kicks. And now he is getting jealous over the past lovers of his angel best friend and had admitted to a sore bottom from a two fingers, one orgasm, and half a bottle of lube.

 _Christ_.

He stills the angel’s hands, takes the towel, tosses it next to the glove on the floor. And then he slides his legs down, bracketing Aziraphale in the process. He wants to stand up and shimmy into his joggers but Aziraphale seems content to sit on his ankles, directly in his way.

“Shoo,” he says, because his throat is apparently only capable of single syllables.

Aziraphale backs up and even tries to assist in the pulling up of his joggers, the straightening of his socks. He retrieves Crowley’s shirt from the floor and hands it out to him.

“Thanks,” he mutters, and shrugs into it.

“Are you hungry?”

Crowley scratches at the back of his neck, unsure of what to do with this body he has been forced inside of. When did the arms get so long? He does not know where to put them.

“Uh, yeah. A bit.”

“You should drink something. Let me go wash up and get you some water.”

He is not sure how but it is somehow worse to be alone, aware all at once of how he had gotten them into this mess and the ridiculous attempts they are forced to make to correct it. He pulls his glasses off, rubs at his eyes, slides them back on.

He feels tired, and strange, and it is only the thought that there is an obviously miraculous to-go cup still full of Soho’s finest coffee that propels him out of the office and into the kitchen, where Aziraphale is waiting for him, water in hand.

“ _Drink_.”

He does.

“That didn’t take very long,” he says, and stares down into the bottom of the cup.

“It didn’t.”

“At this rate I’ll need to buy hair dye just to keep up appearances.”

Aziraphale glances at him sharply.

“Is there— are you going _grey_?”

“Oh, no. But I mean,” he looks down at himself, “what is this body in human years? Mid-forties? I should’ve picked a younger one.”

The smile doesn’t quite stick.

“At this rate you’ll be making a sex tape with an octogenarian.”

Aziraphale doesn’t laugh, which Crowley finds a bit unfair— it’s a topical joke.

“You’re already six-thousand years old,” Aziraphale says stiffly.

Crowley tongues at his teeth and looks again into the empty cup, trying to calculate time and the growth rate of body hair.

“We could try again?” he says, and swallows. “Later?” Aziraphale says nothing so Crowley goes for the nuclear option, utters the magic words: “after lunch?”

“Oh, yes. Excellent. Lunch.”

Even after bringing up Aziraphale’s favorite topic the angel still looks far-off, a trouble layered beneath his usual flavor of anxiety.

“You okay?”

Crowley shoves his hands in his pockets, too aware of how he fits in this skin, of how his feet feel on the floor. A lesson in mindfulness that he never wanted.

“I do hope I didn’t hurt you,” Aziraphale stutters out, the words jumbled a bit together.

“You didn’t.” Crowley can’t seem to find where his breath went. “It was— nice.”

Aziraphale gives him a tight lipped look of long-suffering, the one that clearly says _I know when you lie to me_ , and Crowley heaves out a sigh, looking elsewhere.

“Okay so it wasn’t nice the _whole_ time but the end justified the means.”

“I’m sorry.”

“ _Don’t_ —“

The anger shocks him, racing hot through his veins. He has the striking desire to push Aziraphale up against a wall again, maybe this time mash a kiss into his dumb mouth.

“Don’t _fucking_ apologize to me,” he says hotly, and pushes past to sit on the sofa.

Aziraphale follows him, looking decidedly displeased with his tone.

“I’m—“

“ _Don’t_ ,” he warns again.

It ebbs out, drains down. Silence stretches between them.

“Sorry,” he mutters, at last.

“It’s quite alright. You always did have a temper.”

Aziraphale perches next to him on the sofa, staring out at the windows.

He decides, all at once, that he owes Aziraphale a great number of things. A pillow, for one— that he grabs from behind his own back to stuff between angel and sofa— a move that earns him a cocked eyebrow and a small smile. And a thank you, for another.

“Thanks,” he murmurs, “for the— the coffee and the— you know not making me feel bad about the— and just doing all of it your knees must really hurt.”

Aziraphale looks down at them, pressed together and beneath his folded hands, a prim and impossibly polite manner of sitting. Crowley isn’t sure he has ever had such good posture in his entire life as Aziraphale does sitting casually on his sofa.

“They don’t,” he says softly. “You don’t have to thank me. I’m— I’m happy to do it. To help.”

He wants to curl up in his lap, lay his head there, let Aziraphale stroke him to sleep. The desire to touch him is overwhelming and he has to mentally scold himself— remind himself that he’d just had more than he could’ve ever have hoped from the angel for about ten whole minutes and he should not be greedy. Not for this.

He closes his eyes, braces his hands out flat on either side of himself.

“I’m tired,” he says, because he is, deeply so.

“You could nap. I can order us lunch. Go pick it up. I’ll wake you when I get back.”

Crowley lets his head hang down between his shoulders and can feel the glasses sliding down his nose. He wants to take them off and throw them against the wall.

“That sounds nice.”

It is comfortably silent. There is the hum of his refrigerator, the clicking of the ice maker. Pipes from a neighboring flat pump water, the angel next to him breathes. He feels tired and warm and somehow, delightfully sore. He thinks of Aziraphale yesterday, holding on to that soreness. Wonders if they have matching twin aches.

“I don’t want to end up in the mail room,” he says, finally.

The ice cubes tumble noisily into their bin, a car horn sings in the distance. And then a warm and soft hand closes over top of his, lacing their fingers together. There is a shift and a slide and a warm shoulder pressed gently into his, a nose bumping softly into his temple.

“You won’t,” Aziraphale whispers, and Crowley hopes beyond reason that he’s right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Insert/s" are close ups that are usually shot by the second unit. B-roll kinda deal. I love double-entendres. I'm insufferable.
> 
> These chapters keep getting longer. RIP.


	11. back in

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this took forever. maybe if my chapters were shorter I could post more frequently but, alas. here, have 13.5k in one chapter. I don't know. 
> 
> content warning for bodies being bodies. again. they leak. I don't know what to tell ya.

He had fallen asleep to the sound of Aziraphale breathing, a metronome to dream to, right there on the sofa.

He isn’t sure how long it has been, four years or maybe four minutes, a sensation so similar to the act of bending time that his fingers ache with the memory of it, even whilst half asleep. He flexes his hand, doesn’t open his eyes.

Beneath the coverlet of sleep the memory of the morning twists itself into a pleasant and familiar fantasy: a trip for coffee, mutually desired blowjobs, a nap while his angelic lover fixes lunch. That last part, he realizes slowly, and then all at once, isn’t quite a dream.

He can hear beyond the high back of the sofa the quiet noises of Aziraphale in his kitchen. The tiny measured steps of his footfalls, the delicate placing of items on the counter. There is the rustling of takeaway bags, containers, a clear understanding that Aziraphale had sent himself on an expedition for lunch sometime in the span of Crowley’s sleep and had returned to plate the food onto china instead of styrofoam. Something that Aziraphale would no doubt consider a necessary propriety.

There is the sound of plastic opening, and then he can smell seaweed and ginger— sushi, he realizes dreamily. And then behind it, on its back, is the warm sunshine of Aziraphale himself, of his unintended miracles— the residual yellow of his expectations. The avocado will be perfect because he believes it to be, the water in the tea kettle will come to the ideal temperature without being asked, Crowley will have chopsticks in his utensil drawer because Aziraphale cannot conceive of a universe where they won’t be there. As if on cue, he hears the cutlery drawer open, slide shut.

Crowley is smiling with his eyes closed, listening to him work. He lifts fully into lucidity to the sound of chopsticks on china, the quiet sounds of Aziraphale’s hands on a paper bag, plastic salsa cups, takeaway food containers.

Hands, he realizes slowly, that had been all over him sometime this morning.

He opens his eyes, stares sightlessly at the ceiling. A cold sweat breaks out down his spine. He very nearly bolts upright but reins in the compulsion, forcing himself to hide behind the high back of his sofa.

He blinks, and fixes his glasses, and tries not to breathe so heavily. His head feels like it has been stuffed with cotton— groggy and the furthest thing from _alert_ and he wonders why the hell he had even taken a nap if the result is feeling worse than he had before. His mouth feels terribly dry again. His nose hurts where the frame of his glasses had been digging in.

He can hear Aziraphale’s footsteps coming closer to the sofa and he closes his eyes, stills his arms, feigns sleep. He is not entirely sure why he does it— out of panic maybe, a residual play-dead coping mechanism, something left over from being a snake.

He tries not to sweat. He tries to breathe evenly. He will observe mutely what Aziraphale gets up to while he sleeps and definitely, absolutely _not_ think about whatever had transpired before he had taken this nap. Don’t think about it. _Don’t_.

It turns out that Aziraphale merely stands over him for a moment, no doubt with his hands joined in front of him nervously, probably fiddling with the pinky ring, perhaps questioning whether to remove the sunglasses. But then the air shifts, he’s gone, and Crowley can feel that mysterious blanket from the other night getting pulled up over his shoulders again, tucked in around his legs.

He is fairly certain that Aziraphale knows he’s awake— he _must_ for all his heartbeat is pounding out an intense and most likely highly visible rhythm. The blanket is probably moving with the force of it.

But the feel of him vanishes a moment later, the sunshine in his mouth wanes, and he can hear then the curtains being pulled closed, the kettle coming to temperature.

Aziraphale moves around this space as if it is his. He knows where the teacups are. He knows where the spoons reside. He knows the sweetener exists in single-serving packets inside of an antique sugar bowl with a lid, something that Crowley is certain confounds and irritates Aziraphale in equal measure.

He realizes belatedly that he’s smiling again, eyes still closed, on account of the angel’s comfort in his home perhaps, or because of the frighteningly easy display of domesticity. With his eyes closed and the curtains drawn and the rain starting just outside his window he can slip back into that pleasant daydream, a disassociation perhaps, almost imagine that this is it— their life together— having just made love on the desk in his office and now Aziraphale is making him lunch, pouring himself tea, about to settle in next to him on the sofa with a book and read the afternoon away. Tonight they will make dinner together and watch a movie. They might have sex again on the bed, Crowley can suck Aziraphale off— he had liked that. And later, after they’ve both showered together and dried off and brushed their teeth they can climb back into their mussed up sheets and Aziraphale can attempt to read a book while Crowley attempts to distract him.

It’s an effortless fantasy. One he had thought about before and falls into now with a familiar and dreamy ease. Like pulling on a familiar jacket, clothing he never wants to take off.

He thinks of the beige monstrosity, wonders if it’s still in his bedroom, if Aziraphale will want it back.

He is jostled into reality again by the sofa sagging beneath a familiar weight. There’s a quiet sigh and Crowley gets the odd sense that Aziraphale is just looking around, perhaps taking in the television he doesn’t know how to operate or perhaps the massive coffee table books on hellish architecture and the cosmos— ones he had meant to hide.

A shadow falls across his closed eyes and then there is a hand, brushing back his hair, straightening the blanket. Butterflies squirm in Crowley’s chest, his heart feels like it has developed a chronic case of the hiccups.

And then as quietly as they were there the hands are suddenly not, a display of affection that reminds Crowley of the ease of Aziraphale’s love for everything, always. _Angel_ , he thinks, and the word resonates with both longing and adoration.

He opens his eyes, looks up and back to see Aziraphale upside down and beautiful, staring at something in his lap.

“Did I wake you?” He murmurs, looking worried.

Crowley pushes his glasses up a little higher, makes a long and indulgent show of stretching just for the sake of snaking his arms across Aziraphale’s lap.

“No,” he says, sitting up. “Not at all.”

“Oh, good.”

Crowley looks down at Aziraphale’s lap, to the white box cradled between his hands.

“You bought a phone,” he says.

Aziraphale looks down.

“I did.”

“An iPhone.”

“Yes.”

“By yourself?”

Aziraphale glances over at him, annoyed.

“I know how to purchase things.”

Crowley can think only of how Aziraphale continues to call it ‘The Ebay’ but decides to bite his tongue.

“Thank someone you didn’t buy an Android,” he mutters. He reaches over and takes the box out of Aziraphale’s hands.

“Why is that?”

Crowley pulls on the tab, lifts the phone, turns it on. It’s white and silver and impossibly sleek. Infinitely breakable. He imagines Aziraphale will want for some stupid angel-winged phone case. Perhaps put some choir of heavenly sounds as his ringtone. A wallpaper of celestial imagery.

He turns it on and hands it over.

“They have the charming tendency to explode,” he says, and offers a lopsided smile.

Both Aziraphale’s gaze and his mouth go flat. His eyebrow, on the other hand, quirks up.

“Your work, I suppose?”

He watches Aziraphale flip the phone over, hold it by his fingertips. The screen flashes through a myriad of _welcomes_ in different languages.

“Absolutely not.”

“I’m assuming you took credit for it, however.”

“Absolutely.”

“I confess I don’t quite know how this works,” Aziraphale murmurs, ignoring him.

“Here.” He sits further upright and leans closer, their shoulders brushing. An arc of heat courses through him at the touch. “These are just… stupid tips. I don’t know. Just swipe out of them, like this.”

He drags his thumb up from the bottom and it leaves behind a smudge— one thick opaque line of grease. He stares at it for a moment of horror, heart strangely silent. And then he feels oddly sick, the nap catching up to him perhaps, staring at Aziraphale’s perfect white phone and his perfect fucking of it up.

“Shit, sorry.”

He takes it and rubs it clean with his shirt.

“Anyway.” He hands it back. “You can— get apps if you want, or games, or even _books_ —“

“I don’t need any of that. Just— how can I telephone you? If I need to.”

Crowley tries very hard not to think about how their shoulders are nearly pressed together, how he can feel one of Aziraphale’s curls brushing his ear when he leans in close to see what he’s doing.

“Phone, and then there— the plus sign. Here, I’ll put in my—“

But Aziraphale is already typing in his phone number via index finger on his right hand. First his mobile. Then his landline. He knows them. By heart. He has the audacity to type in his full name. The J still doesn’t mean anything.

Crowley’s voice gets caught in his throat.

“And I can send you letters over it,” Aziraphale says, not looking up.

“Texts,” he manages, and then reaches over. “In here, messages. You can capitalize things like this,” he says, and their fingers brush across the tiny keyboard, “but I never do.”

“Of course you don’t,” Aziraphale breathes, but it is entirely fond.

“And you can take pictures,” Crowley forges on, trying to ignore the frighteningly high-levels of adrenaline that keep spiking through him. “Selfies. Show me how much you don’t change.”

Aziraphale looks strangely upset. Shocked maybe. His mouth opens, closes. Up this close Crowley can see him tonguing at his teeth. He really needs to fix the climate control.

“And there are emojis.”

His throat seems hellbent on closing up so he just takes Aziraphale’s phone, thumbs the only contact in it a string of random pictures. One smiley face with sunglasses, a skull, a clown.

“That face is rather unsettling,” Aziraphale says, bringing the phone up close to his eyes.

Crowley’s pocket buzzes.

“The clown? Yeah. The design is a bit too Pogo, if you ask me.”

He digs through his pocket to find his own phone, a message from an unknown number. His heart skips a beat.

“I’ll keep it with me,” Aziraphale says, and there is some dark unknowable emotion that hides in his face when he says it. “In case you need me. For anything.”

“Sure,” Crowley says carefully. “I mean, same here. Mine is always with me. In case you ever need anything.”

Aziraphale nods without looking at him and slides the phone out on the coffee table, stares down at it.

“I brought lunch,” he says, and it appears as though he is forcing himself to look up and over at Crowley. “Sushi.”

“Your favorite.”

There is that bastardly wiggle in Aziraphale’s shoulders.

“It was something for myself, certainly,” he says, and something about the way he says it slides underneath Crowley’s skin, presents a realization he had not thought about.

Crowley opens his mouth to say something, some clever retort that will clearly form itself without having any sort of higher brain functioning behind it— but all that emerges is a strangled sort of squeak and a wheeze of air out after it.

Crowley clears his throat. Tries again.

“Shit, I— I should’ve— Uh.”

He isn’t certain when his blood supply became so highly mobile, when it began to favor his face, his ears, the back of his damned neck. He supposes it _had_ been rather rude, in retrospect— to let himself get serviced on his office chair and then to have offered nothing in return. But he still is not certain of the boundary lines between them, the expectations. It is a conversation that they desperately need to have that he desperately wants to avoid.

And in his defense, he had been far too busy having a panic attack over his own body to function outside of it for even one measly second.

“I should’ve… reciprocated,” he settles on. “Earlier. In the office.”

Aziraphale looks personally affronted and perhaps even a bit bewildered. A pale eyebrow lifts up at him.

“Of course not. You were— it was—“

Aziraphale appears to be at a loss, uncertain too of the expectations. He looks down at the phone again and Crowley would like to show him _here, look, just text me a string of emojis and I’ll decipher them like hieroglyphics, it’ll be easier, you remember those, right?_ “I’d never expect you to— that isn’t what— you were fatigued,” Aziraphale settles on, and Crowley concedes that he isn’t wrong.

“Up too late,” he murmurs and tries to smile and bites off the _thinking about you_.

“Are you hungry? You should really have some water, at least.”

Crowley looks up towards the ceiling and manages to not roll his eyes.

“Water, yes. Sure. Food,” he says, “ _again_.”

“Three square meals,” Aziraphale has the audacity to say happily, as if such a thing is a gift instead of a curse. “With snacks in between. And dessert,” he adds, with a tilt of his head that reminds Crowley so vividly of Aziraphale’s quest for brioche that he can nearly envision those satin pumps, the frilly coat, the smell of the Bastille.

He smiles. Utterly, completely, helplessly gone. He wants to smack himself.

“You’ve always had a bloody sweet tooth,” Crowley says, and tells his heart, again, _shut up_.

Aziraphale sucks on his teeth and looks put out, as if such a thing is offensive. And then he looks down, looks up, looks over. His lips purse ever so slightly, as if he is thinking about something other than food.

“I enjoy bitter things too.”

Crowley lifts what is probably a most besotted eyebrow at him.

“Like dark chocolate,” Aziraphale says.

Crowley narrows his eyes.

“Is that _not_ a sweet?”

He appears to mull it over, as if such a thought deserves serious consideration.

“Sometimes,” he says, with a sort of finality. And that, Crowley realizes, is that.

* * *

“Are you still tired?” Aziraphale asks, later, after far too much sushi and some kind of slimy but altogether not-terrible salad made entirely of seaweed.

Crowley pokes the remainder with his chopstick.

“A bit,” he says, and then looks up. “No. Not really.”

“Oh, excellent.”

“Not sure why I passed out like that,” he murmurs, catapulting a sesame seed off his chopstick and into the far-away sink. “I was tired but not _that_ tired.”

“Orgasm will do that,” Aziraphale says. Crowley coughs a bit on some phantom sesame seed, surprised.

“You still have coffee, by the way,” Aziraphale says brightly, and slides the cup from earlier across his white counter.

It is still impossibly, improbably hot. Crowley glares at it.

“It’s still hot,” he says, he tastes yellow.

“Yes,” Aziraphale replies, smiling.

“It shouldn’t be hot.”

“Why not?”

“It’s about… several _hours_ old that’s why not.”

Aziraphale looks like he is doing some sort of calculation, mental math that is requiring use of his eyes if the way they are darting about has anything to say about it.

“ _Marvelous_ to-go cups humans have invented,” he seems to settle on, _again_.

Crowley sips it and decides not to focus on the somewhat itchy taste of dandelion in his mouth, the brightness of sunshine.

“You can’t bless me,” he spits out.

Aziraphale goes completely still across from him, mouth open, only his eyelids blinking in disbelief.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You,” Crowley says, and stabs his chopstick into the seaweed, “can’t keep _blessing me_.”

Aziraphale’s mouth closes with a snap.

“How did you—“

“I’m still— there’s still _something_ demonic in me,” Crowley says, and doesn’t look up. “At least for now.”

He can feel more than see Aziraphale shifting uncomfortably in his chair.

“And I was _up_ last night because I kept _sneezing_ because someone was laying celestial wards on the exterior of my _flat_.”

Aziraphale pales until he is the color of his hair.

“I apologize,” he says hastily. “I was not aware that— I didn’t intend— _sneezing?_ ”

“Sneezing. And itching. And I’m fairly certain there were _hives_ although that may have been the cheap soap.”

“Oh, I do believe you need the kind labeled for sensitive skin, dear I—“

“—I _don’t,_ ” he snaps. Crowley closes his mouth and his eyes and exhales through his nose, attempting to dissolve himself of frustration and the positively terrifying lack of power he currently possesses. If he thinks about such a thing he is fairly certain it will drain all at once out of his fingertips, like sand in an hourglass.

When Crowley opens his eyes again Aziraphale is straightening his chopsticks into twin parallel lines, looking primly down. There are fine blue veins across his eyelids, threading back into across his temples, his hairline. At this distance it makes him look like marble, a statue, _perfection_.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, and looks away.

“Nothing to apologize for I shouldn’t have— it was an attempt to— I won’t do it again.”

“Maybe,” Crowley forces himself to say, “ _later_. When it gets really— when I’m fully— you know. If it comes to that.” His incisors feel dull and he wonders when they had lost their edge.

Aziraphale nods and says nothing and there is that pleasant bit of skin pushing into his bow tie again as he visibly swallows.

“Of course,” he says. “Whatever you need. Truly.”

Crowley has to bite down with his dulled teeth into the meat of his cheek to keep from snapping again, feeling all at once like some kind of cornered wounded animal, damaged goods, something crystal perhaps— in need of delicate handling and offers of charity. And that’s exactly what it tastes like, _charity_ , the blessings and the coffee in its stupid miraculous cup, the iPhone that Aziraphale only had seen fit to purchase _now_ in the wake of his utter powerlessness, the _whatever you need_ and the obvious, terrible, _disgusting_ kid-glove treatment. He tastes iron in his mouth and thinks wildly of the fragility of glass, of it being broken, of the pieces being sharp enough to cut.

“Honestly, Crowley.”

And then Aziraphale does the worst thing, the most angelic thing— he reaches over and puts his perfectly manicured hand on top of Crowley’s, right there on the countertop.

“Whatever you need,” he finishes.

Crowley can’t seem to look up from the hand. Something inside of him splinters but for once in his entire damned existence nothing happens. There is no snapping stretch of his wings from the firmament, no fangs breaking through his mouth, no scales flashing obsidian beneath his skin. The plants in his atrium do not shudder or shake, the windows do not rattle.

There is just Aziraphale, his best friend that had been held at an arm’s-length and never closer, still holding his hand, at arm’s length, having the courage to look Crowley in the eye with nothing but softness on his face.

He has the incredible impulse to vomit, or yank his hand back and retreat to some safe and closed up corner. Instead, he forces himself to swallow back the bile, remind himself it’s Aziraphale, _Aziraphale_ — and he closes his eyes because somehow the understanding that it’s the angel he has been desperately in love with since the beginning of time that is making this utter bearing of vulnerability _worse_ and not _better_.

He forces his eyes open, stares down at that hand. His own hand underneath seems misshapen and hideous by default, lined with bulbous veins and ungainly knuckles, nails that are already needing to be cut. He inhales, blinks.

And then as carefully as possible, he pulls his hand back, secures it safely on his own lap.

“I’m fine,” he says, as gently as he can. “For now.”

Aziraphale looks confused, wounded even, perplexed perhaps by the rebuff of his angelic advances. As if bewildered that something or someone would ever refuse the utterly selfless assistance of an actual angel.

He watches Aziraphale pull his hand back too, reach for the tea as if he needs something to hold on to. And Crowley knows he had probably just hurt him, had punctured something, something innate. Aziraphale helps because that’s what he is hardwired to do, always— help people and babies and animals, help his plants with their fungus gnats and help takeaway cups with their heat retention. Aziraphale, Crowley had realized at some point in their long, long friendship, did not have the capacity to shut off that particular trait— even in the case of humans looking for rare and valuable first editions that made the angel squirm and hem and haw in the slow reveal that _yes_ , he did have that title in stock and _fine_ , he supposes he can part with it. It is a trait that is coded so deeply into his being that Crowley sometimes does not know where the _angel_ ends and the _Aziraphale_ begins.

“Of course,” Aziraphale says, and takes a sip. “Whenever you need me.”

It sounds as though there might be more to that statement, behind it, and Crowley waits, more patiently than he thought possible— but nothing comes forth. Aziraphale merely drinks his tea and stares straight forward, the calm lakebed beneath what is a potentially squalling surface.

“I’m sorry,” Crowley manages, and only because he isn’t looking at him. “I feel—“ He swallows and stares at the speckles of sesame seeds on his counter, the ones that hadn’t quite made it to the sink, “scared,” he settles on.

The vulnerability burns and he wants to crush himself into his bed, cover his soft parts, curl into a protective ball. Because for all Aziraphale is hardwired to help Crowley is hardwired to _rebuff it_ , any of it— the streak of independence that courses through him burns like a lightning strike at even the _idea_ of assistance. Because _help_ is in the same family as _power_ and those who are in need of that first thing are certainly also without the second. The lineage of power is capped with authority, and if there is one thing that Crowley cannot abide by it is being told, _by anyone_ , what to do. Help be damned.

But he had clearly damaged something within Aziraphale and the angel deserves, especially after this morning, yesterday, hell this _entire week_ , at least something of an explanation.

“I understand,” Aziraphale murmurs, but doesn’t reach out, not again. “You don’t have to apologize to me,” he says with a ferocity that is shocking in its quietness. “Not for this.”

The air feels like water, thick and hot and he isn’t sure how he’s even able to breathe it, how he hasn’t lifted up and floated away on its current. He wishes he could disappear, sink down into the floorboards, avoid Aziraphale’s gaze and what he might find there.

Instead he stares at his counter. He should really clean up those sesame seeds.

“‘Kay,” he says, with no air in his lungs, and hopes that his breathing is loud only to himself.

Aziraphale clears his throat and finally puts his teacup down, the ceramic ringing out as it impacts the counter.

“We really must,” Aziraphale pauses and blinks and clears his throat again, as if there is something in it, as if there is something in his eye, “get the show on the road,” he finishes, with forced excitement. “No time to waste.”

“How much footage do you think we have?”

“Twenty-two minutes.”

Crowley looks at him sharply.

“Twenty-two minutes,” he repeats faintly.

“Yes. So, like I said— show on the road.”

He had watched the tape. He had watched the tape and looked at the time stamp and the implication that Crowley’s mortifying premature ejaculation might _actually_ kill him slides into focus.

“Fuck,” he breathes.

Aziraphale says nothing.

“What did you… what should we…?”

He had every intention of finishing that statement but instead decides on lifting the edges of the last syllable into a question. It works, he figures. Sort of.

“Is that the fiendish espresso machine that won’t work?” Aziraphale asks, staring back into the recesses of his counter.

“Erm, yeah.”

Aziraphale makes a noise in his throat and squints at it, then turns back to him.

“I know that we… decided on you being the receiving partner today but there is no pressure to continue in that vein if you do not wish.”

There is a net of fear and adrenaline that blanket over him, sinking in slowly. The receptive partner, he thinks. Yes. No. He wonders how long things take to move down the track of digestion and how much he has eaten today. How much time did his silicone torture device afford him? He should not have eaten lunch. Or breakfast. He definitely should not have consumed coffee, despite his abrupt post-coital exhaustion. He looks sidelong at his miraculously hot takeaway cup as if coffee had, much like his espresso machine, betrayed him yet again.

“I— yes?”

It comes out as a question. He did not intend for it to be a question.

“Is that a yes that you will still be the receptive partner?”

“Uh, sure. Maybe. I don’t know,” he finishes honestly.

Aziraphale is still not looking at him, staring stiffly down at their plates.

“There is no pressure to continue doing something that you clearly did not—“

“—I said I’ll do it,” Crowley bites out, wildly annoyed at his body having the gall to not enjoy something that he had fantasized about for so long and annoyed at Aziraphale’s stiff insistence that it is not necessary for him to enjoy something. He had never taken kindly to being told what he should or should not like, or do, and had never been quite _okay_ with the vague sense that such a thing felt like orders from some authority that _isn’t himself_.

He is a fucking _demon_ and he alone will decide what he likes and when he will like it. And he will like such a thing starting _right now_.

He flexes his jaw.

Aziraphale sighs nosily, annoyed himself, perhaps, although Crowley isn’t quite sure why. He had, after all, just agreed to get fucked.

“Very well,” Aziraphale straightens up the plates, stacks them. “We can move locations. To the bedroom perhaps?”

“Bedroom,” Crowley repeats. “Right.”

He thinks of his Mess Contingency Plan, decides he needs more towels, preferably black ones— the white had been a spectacularly bad idea, _no one_ needs to see what gets left behind on white towels— the lubricant that is still in the office, more gloves if Aziraphale would allow it—

Condoms, he thinks, and blinks, he should have purchased condoms. Gloves for the penis, they are. Just fling the whole thing off when finished, no muss no fuss. They should have been an essential element in the Mess Contingency Plan and he had _forgotten_ about them, somehow, even after he had made an absolute _mess_ of Aziraphale by not wearing one and—

“I’ll clean up.”

Aziraphale had been talking, apparently, and Crowley nods belatedly.

“I’ll go— uh.”

“I’m sure you have preparations to attend to,” Aziraphale says, without missing much of a beat. “Do drink some water though.”

He ignores the advice, prickly about being told what to do yet again and slides back into his office— where he experiences an abrupt lurching wave of some hybrid emotion: butterflies, revulsion, shame. He powers through it, picking up the aggressive lube, the camera, the extra unused glove.

He slinks around Aziraphale in the kitchen, reminded of his domestic fantasy— Aziraphale loading the dishwasher as if operating within the dream— and takes himself to his bedroom.

The sheets get straightened, again. A black towel gets wetted and lined up on the bedside table. His teeth get thoroughly and somewhat violently brushed. The tripod for the camera gets assembled and telescoped out and placed, menacingly, at the end of his bed. He has another vision of the _Civic TV_ logo and he considers that he should really stop watching horror movies. Or at the very least lay off the Cronenberg.

“Lovely windows,” Aziraphale says from the doorway, and he jumps.

“Christ,” he breathes.

“Sorry to frighten you.”

“You didn’t.”

Aziraphale looks around the room, looking demure and serene and _pretty_ , Crowley thinks, entirely too fucking pretty. Like he had walked out of a Botticelli painting and had the audacity to stand placidly in Crowley’s bedroom-- a place that is beginning to feel cramped and not unlike a Hieronymus-Bosch vision of Hell.

He is looking somewhere over Crowley’s shoulder, and it takes one backward glance to confirm that he is eyeing up the Mess Contingency Kit, perhaps spying the return of the glove. For perhaps the twentieth time Crowley laments not having a butane torch, something to burn down his entire life.

“Shall we then?” Aziraphale says, with an unnervingly serene smile on his face. It’s a show, of course it is— Crowley hadn’t spent six thousand years deciphering Aziraphale’s micro facial movements to be fleeced by a calm smile. He considers himself something of an expert, and as an expert he knows that in order to pull Aziraphale out of that closed protective headspace there is one thing that will most definitely work.

Something that he really, _really_ doesn’t want to do.

He closes his eyes, inhales, steels his nerves. And he tries to exhale out the grinding intensive desire to rip all of his skin off at what he’s about to say.

“Yes,” he says simply, opening his eyes and straightening his glasses. “I’m going t— I might—“ he tamps down on the burning in his throat, the lurching revolt of his entire body against what is clearly an affront to his demonic integrity. “I’ll need your help.”

The switch is nearly instant and getting to witness the sun come up on Aziraphale’s face is nearly worth the flaying of his dignity to achieve it.

“You do?”

“Yeah,” he says, entirely breathless. He waves a dumb hand as if that is going to explain anything. “Getting going. Turned on. You know.”

He probably looks like a fucking tomato and even worse, a fucking idiot— standing at the side of his bed with his stupid damp towel behind him, the aggressive lube that is probably peeking out menacingly in Aziraphale’s periphery.

“Of course,” Aziraphale breathes, and his eyes have entirely too much light in them. It looks like a magic trick, some coy play of the light. “How can I help? What do you need?”

It is an entirely gruesome question. Images of Aziraphale marching down to Hell and smiting the whole lousy lot of them spring to mind along with visions of him washing Crowley’s feet again, of him bringing him food and coffee, calling him a _good boy_ again even though the memory now makes Crowley’s teeth hurt.

“Maybe,” Crowley stops and licks his lips and looks down at the cold stony floor. “Maybe you can kiss me. Off camera. For a bit. I like kissing.” His voice sounds breathless and pathetic to his own ears. He’d like very much to turn into smoke, _vapor_. 

“You… like kissing?”

He looks up, surprised.

“Yeah,” he murmurs, confused. “Why?”

Aziraphale is blinking at him slowly, eyebrows nearly drawn together.

“I… I wasn’t certain you liked it.”

There is some sort of frayed electrical snapping in his brain.

“You— _what_?”

“I hadn’t known whether it was enjoyable to you or not.”

It is now Crowley’s turn to do mental math, to look for formulas on the ceiling, the floor, the side walls.

“Why would it not be enjoyable?”

“I don’t _know_ I just didn’t want to make _assumptions_.”

“I think you can safely assume that kissing is a universally desired thing.”

Aziraphale looks skyward as if seeking out the formula for _dealing with an idiot_. Crowley can see him sucking at his teeth.

“Not necessarily,” he says, and it lands like a punch to the stomach.

There are approximately one million five hundred negative thoughts all starting with ‘Aziraphale hates kissing’ and ending with ‘me’ cycling through Crowley’s head.

“Oh.”

“No, I meant— there’s all sorts of people in the world. I’m sure there are plenty that do not like kissing. Especially if the party is not… who they are currently desiring. I did not want to make assumptions.”

It feels like a very deliberate opening, a crack in the plaster that he wants very much to peer into, rip apart. He is fairly certain that inside the crack he will find a wormhole that stretches out in dual directions. To the left he will find the ‘I am clearly not the party you are desiring’ black hole and to the right he will have the ‘I am currently desiring you and have wanted to smash my mouth into yours since mouths were first invented’ one and he isn’t sure which is the side to lean towards.

There is a fear of spooking Aziraphale, _again_ , with his disgusting trust and his rubbish honesty and his own vulnerability feels prickly beneath his feet. A walk along eggshells that are already broken.

“Well I do,” he says, bypassing the crack in the plaster all together. “Like it.”

There are a number of confused and shifting expressions on Aziraphale’s face that very quickly get shuttered.

“If you’re certain.”

Crowley chews on the interior of his cheek again.

“Do _you_ like it?”

There is a dart of panic that strikes him for even asking the question. But questions are all Crowley had ever naturally been good at, that and sleeping and maybe touching his toes, but as soon as the words leave his mouth he has an abrupt sense that he should have kept quiet. _Tact_ , Aziraphale would say, _develop some_.

Aziraphale looks everywhere but _at him_ , which is incredible because Crowley is performing a similar feat. By the time he opens his mouth again they have both cumulatively stared at every square centimeter that exists between them.

“I suppose.”

Crowley tips his head back to stare at the ceiling.

“I’m not sure if that’s a terrible endorsement of me or anyone else you’ve ever made out with.”

He snaps his head back down because bearing his neck like that feels wildly intimate in the midst of this affecting conversation.

“I—“

Aziraphale blinks at him, his hands coming together to worry at the pinky ring. His pale eyebrows are nearly touching.

“It’s fine,” Crowley says. “I shouldn’t have— it’s whatever. I like kissing. You don’t have to. We don’t have to do it.”

Something flashes in Aziraphale’s eyes and he looks up at him from beneath his eyelashes, his mouth a tight line.

“And yet when I told you you didn’t have to worry about liking—“

“That’s _different_.”

He isn’t sure how. But it is.

“I do,” Aziraphale says suddenly.

“You do what?”

“Like it. Kissing.” His lips purse a bit and he stares sidelong at the bed, the aggressive lube, the black towel.

He wants to follow the statement up with a single syllable question. Just a quiet _me?_ But he bites his tongue and figures that Aziraphale getting kissed soundly and getting kissed well even if it hadn’t been by him is a good thing. The shred of altruism that hadn’t been burnt off by years of demonic energy wants Aziraphale to have had that. Good memories. Better kisses. The knowledge to understand what he likes and doesn’t.

He nods and looks askance and blinks away that threat of moisture. He won’t be jealous. He _won’t_.

“Then maybe we should,” he manages, and watches as Aziraphale nods.

There is a slow step forward, those strong hands at the edges of his waistcoat, pulling it down.

“Yes,” Aziraphale says softly. “Perhaps we ought to.”

Crowley has the chance to breathe once, twice, before Aziraphale is cupping softly at his jaw, angling his lips up, capturing them with his own.

It is entirely without tongue, entirely too sweet. At some breathless juncture Aziraphale pulls back just far enough to push the tips of their noses together before kissing him soundly again, tiny soft sounds squeezing out of his throat.

Crowley doesn’t know what to do with his hands, isn’t sure if touching is okay because the camera clearly isn’t rolling, isn’t even _on_ , but not touching him feels like some kind of inconceivable torture so he gives in. It’s the elbows first, chaste enough, on that biscuit-colored coat, and then, braver with the passing of minutes and the lack of reaction, the shoulders, the back, then a long slow slide down to his hips.

It is entirely uncomfortable to kiss with glasses on but he cannot take them off, even as Aziraphale continually bumps them with his forehead, his cheek. He waits in between nips for a hand to rise up and pull them off but it never comes, some unspoken boundary in place perhaps, Aziraphale aware that he had pushed a nerve this morning concerning displays of vulnerability.

“S’nice,” Crowley breathes, eventually, after an untold number of minutes pass.

“It is,” Aziraphale agrees easily, but his eyes are closed, his hands remain chaste and glued to the exterior of Crowley’s arms. “I don’t mean to rush you but, Crowley we should— we really need to—“ he pauses and licks his lips and finally opens his eyes, reveals the wet blue depths of them. He looks sad, or frightened, and it has the immediate effect of throwing a wet blanket on Crowley’s otherwise calm mood.

“What’s wrong?”

“We should really turn the camera on,” he says, and every syllable stings. “Even just for this bit.”

Crowley pulls back, nods jerkily, and then steps out of Aziraphale’s grip, stalks over to the camera.

He takes some time behind it, fiddling with buttons that do nothing because the damned thing isn’t even turned on. But it affords him a moment to blink furiously and push down on the heat in his throat, the regret in his chest, and by the time he gets himself together and focuses the camera onto the center of his bed he has cooled himself down to a crisp and professionally dulled emotionally state. Unaffected and chilled.

But Aziraphale is still frayed, a bit guarded, something off in the way his shoulders are set. So Crowley steps up close to him again and endeavors not to stare too much at the ceiling, the floor.

“I’ll still— you know— need your help,” he forces himself to say. “If you’re willing to give it. Unless— you don’t— if you don’t wanna do this today I get it it’s fine you can just go home and—“

“Crowley,” Aziraphale interrupts. “I want to do this. If you do.”

He has the incredible desire to say _I don’t_ , because what he wants to do is crawl up into his favorite corner on the ceiling and lick his wounds in private. He wants to throw the enema currently living in his bathroom into a fucking bonfire and maybe throw himself in after it.

“I do,” he says instead. “The camera’s ready. Whenever, you know.”

Their breathing synchronizes.

“How can I help you?”

The question hangs suspended in the air and Crowley takes it, the obvious bait, chews on it emphatically because that’s what Aziraphale needs and he wants, more than anything, to give him that.

“Just— touches, you know.” He pauses. “More kisses.”

“Okay. Do you think you’ll be able to— you know, orgasm again? So soon?”

He has half a mind of telling him that he had once jerked off six times in two hours after a particularly lovely evening at the Ritz when Aziraphale had worn a white shirt instead of a blue one and gone sans bowtie, because what is one more shameful and embarrassing secret between two friends making a sex tape?

“Yeah,” he says instead, biting his tongue. “Think so. Just might… take a bit longer.” He _hopes_.

Aziraphale nods and is looking at Crowley’s shoulders as if seeing through them.

“Shall I,” he pauses and clears his throat. “Where shall I erm— would you prefer I pull out or—?”

“No,” Crowley says, perhaps a bit too eagerly. “You can. You know. Inside. If you want. Or wherever, really.”

Back, chest, face, mouth, ear— Crowley considers that he wouldn’t mind angelic spunk landing anywhere.

Aziraphale clears his throat again and visibly swallows.

“Oh, excellent. Very well.”

There is a moment of hesitation and then a brief lean forward, a pull back, a regaining of courage or momentum and then Aziraphale is leaning in, planting a chaste kiss into the corner of Crowley’s mouth. It has the incredible reaction of setting off butterflies in every spare centimeter of Crowley’s chest.

“What position should we—?”

Crowley stalls, his heart wedged up in his windpipe.

“I’d like— uh, maybe hands and knees,” he says, trying not to sweat.

He won’t have to look at him. He won’t have to stare up at Aziraphale’s perfect fucking face and watch his eyelids flutter in pleasure, watch as he sinks inside of him. Perhaps face-down and soft-parts protected he will be able to hold orgasm off for five minutes— maybe ten— something, anything, _fuck_.

A pale eyebrow rises up.

He realizes all at once he is definitely _not_ going to take a bit longer.

“I thought you argued against the respectability of such a position,” Aziraphale comments, a bit of his bastard nature creeping out in a tell that says, all at once, _he’s fine_.

Crowley flexes his jaw, swallows.

“Yeah well,” he turns his head and looks at his side table, the aggressive lube, the damp dark towel. “That was for _you_.”

“Meaning?”

He rolls his eyes and his head back over to pin Aziraphale with a frustrated gaze.

“You’re an angel,” he says flatly.

“So?”

Crowley erupts into an orchestration of flinging hands and frustrated gestures, sighs that break out of his mouth.

“ _So?_ So I’m a demon. We’re made for— for bending in half and fucking. Angels are… _not_.”

The eyebrow lifts again, incredulous, even angry perhaps. It seems as though there is an entire litany of words that Aziraphale has in response to that statement but he withholds him.

“If that’s the position you wish I will of course comply—“

“Yes.”

He also has in mind that Aziraphale’s distressing habit of watching whatever his hands are up to will be _considerably_ less distracting if Crowley isn’t able to see it. At least this way he can mash his face into the mattress and let the angel do whatever he’s going to, pray that the minutes fill on the tape.

“I will not wear that, however.”

Aziraphale is staring at the glove.

“Why not?” Crowley whispers hotly.

“Because,” Aziraphale starts, and shifts. “Because it’s unnecessary. And insulting.”

Crowley flexes his jaw and stares sidelong at it, measuring his choices. He shifts uncomfortably.

“It’s been a while since— look, it’s been a _number_ of hours since this morning and I just don’t—“

“—It’s _fine_ ,” Aziraphale interrupts, and they are both doing that remarkable feat of not looking at each other despite being within kissing distance. “I don’t mind. Even if— I won’t judge you.” And then it is Aziraphale’s turn to look naked and vulnerable, pained by something that Crowley perhaps hadn’t understood, not entirely. He watches in mute and rising panic at Aziraphale swallowing, his eyes closed, his shoulders hitched up somewhere near his ears. “You won’t— you aren’t—“ He inhales and tries again and Crowley feels like perhaps he had been misunderstanding this all along, that perhaps he had insulted Aziraphale without meaning to, on some level he had never considered. “You could not ever disappoint me.”

It is an altogether odd word choice. One that feels disarming and large and shockingly, violently accurate. A word with an uncomfortably huge mouthfeel that he is unable to entirely chew on let alone swallow.

Crowley stares down at the floor between them, to the place between their twin socked feet, black and beige. There is a tiny crack in the concrete floor, black spidery shadows threading out away from it. He blinks, nods, swallows.

Aziraphale is looking down between them, his downy head bowed and there is a moment where his hand reaches out, questing for something, fingertips brushing against Crowley’s knuckles in some silent communication. And then the action gets shuttered and withdrawn, as if remembering earlier, his rebuffed advance.

Crowley wants to open his mouth and let everything spill out. All of him. The entire bloody mess. Let all of the _I’m sorries_ and _I’m a messes_ and _I need yous_ fall out between them, fill down along that shadowed crack.

But Aziraphale saves him, this time, like all the times.

“Okay,” he says, “on the bed.” And his voice is low and husky when he says it, the timbre of his voice making Crowley’s knees go weak.

He nods in spite of the voice that rears up inside of him for taking orders, and he reclines, sits down, slithers back.

He watches in mute apprehension as Aziraphale’s hand rises up next to his face and something silent and profound passes between them: their eyes locking, the miracle a heartbeat away from recording all of this, their shame and indecision and fumbling, terrible sex, and Crowley considers all at once that Aziraphale is _frightened_.

Of _what_ Crowley is not quite sure.

His fingers snap.

And in an instant the air in the room shifts, Aziraphale becomes a strong and protective presence once again— a principality— kneeling on the bed between Crowley’s splayed out knees.

He stalks over him like a predator, some large bird of prey perhaps, and Crowley— flat on his back and staring up at the soft paleness of his angel best friend— has visions of his wings, pure white and mantling over him, locked away in the firmament.

There is a hand that presses into the mattress up by Crowley’s head, the thumb tickling against his ear. Looking straight up is an angle he is not sure he has ever really seen Aziraphale from— one where his eyes are shadowed and the light shines through the pink of his ear. One where his lip twitches in something like a smile, at Crowley’s besotted, slack-jawed look perhaps. And then Aziraphale is leaning down and pressing their lips together, his free hand rubbing circles into Crowley’s jaw.

It is dizzying and electric— he feels helpless and powerless and utterly, fantastically _protected_. As if nothing could possibly hurt him within the boundaries of Aziraphale’s arms bracketing his body and even the part of him that rebels at the idea of being told what to do quiets, relaxes, _feels safe_.

Aziraphale pulls back, wetting his lips and looking down into what Crowley hopes are suitably concealed eyes.

“May I undress you?”

Their noses are nearly touching, Aziraphale’s breath puffs out hot and sweet against Crowley’s cheek. He nods dumbly up at him, struck by the warmth in his chest.

“Arms up, my dear,” he murmurs, and leans back to pull Crowley up with him, hands already at the hem of his shirt.

He complies, somewhat, letting Aziraphale pull his clothing off over his head and realizing that the slower they do this the better. So he lets Aziraphale’s hands wander, skimming up his chest and then down his sides, skirting over the waistband of his joggers. A finger runs between them and then pulls back, letting them snap back down over his hips.

Crowley bites down on his lip and forces himself to lie there, arms spread up over his head and feeling like some kind of prey animal, something small and on display, about to be eaten, his jugular exposed. He cannot decide if he likes this or not, if he is tolerating it so well because it is an as-yet undiscovered desire or simply because it’s Aziraphale doing it.

He picks his head up to look at Aziraphale tugging his joggers down, careful to keep his feet socked. And then kisses get pressed to the interior of his knee, up his thigh, finally the cradle of his hip, the crease of his leg.

“Good?” Is the familiar murmured question.

“Yeah,” he breathes back. “Good.”

And then, louder, clearly for show:

“How shall I please you, dearest?”

Crowley squeezes his eyes closed, tilts his head back. He tries to think of how Aziraphale had handled this situation, how he had rolled against Crowley’s body and murmured obscenities as if it was a completely common occurrence. _Come on_ , he thinks, _make this seem natural._

“Fuck me,” he says. “Like you mean it.”

It’s easier to talk like this with his eyes closed so he keeps them wedged shut, not wanting to see the quirk in Aziraphale’s eyebrow, the proud look for performing.

Even if it isn’t _quite_ performance, he thinks, cracking an eye open to see Aziraphale still in his bowtie, shirtsleeves still rolled back, waistcoat buttoned up. It’s disgustingly sexy and he has absolutely no right to make garments that went out of style one-hundred years ago so impossibly attractive. Crowley hates it. _He does._

“Whatever you’d like, darling.”

There is a hand dancing around the idea of his cock so Crowley reaches down and grabs his wrist, directs it, permission without words. He isn’t quite hard, not yet, but certainly getting there, propelled by the memory of the mouth that had been around him not even four hours ago.

“ _Lovely_ ,” Aziraphale murmurs, head bowed and watching his own hand stroking. And then he leans forward and there are kisses again, the pleasant warm weight of Aziraphale on his open thighs, his hips. An elbow gets wedged against his shoulder, a hand gets threaded through his hair, probably pulling it loose. Crowley lets his head get tugged to the side and then there is a mouth exploring his ear, pressing kisses against his tattoo.

“That’s it, darling,” Aziraphale is breathing into his ear, too quiet to be heard on the camera. There is a question that rises up in the back of Crowley’s head and he squashes it, perhaps recognizing at last that if he doesn’t get hard and get fucked he might _actually_ die.

“You look so lovely like this.”

The words are murmured to his tattoo, Aziraphale’s lips brushing his ear. It has lost a bit of its shine, the praise— perhaps because he knows it’s just for the camera, a trick to fluff him into fullness. But with his eyes closed and Aziraphale so close, smelling like soap and linen, he can forgive him for trying.

After all, it still works.

He rolls up into him, the pleasant weight and the pleasant heat, that fantastic buttoned-up strength. Aziraphale’s legs are holding his thighs apart, the velvet waistcoat rubbing against Crowley’s naked stomach.

It’s maddeningly soft, all of it, all of _him_ — the sheets and the angel and the angel’s clothes. His hand around his cock and the words whispered into his ear. He wants to feel sharp and dangerous, not coddled, not _precious_.

“Fuck me,” he breathes out. “Hard. Do it.”

Crowley turns his head to capture Aziraphale’s, sucking a bruising kiss against his lips. There is a surprised noise, a brief pull backwards to stare down at him.

Something flits across Aziraphale’s face for a moment and then disappears, hidden beneath an abrupt mask of performance.

“Turn over,” he says, and his voice has that deep, husky tone again, the one that reminds Crowley that this is it— he’s putting himself at the mercy of an angel of protection. One that clearly does not comprehend his own strength.

But he does, turn over, heart in his throat and back arched like a cat, curled up and protective and _not_ sexy he thinks, as Aziraphale runs a careful hand down his side.

It feels intensely vulnerable despite his near incessant desire to be face-down and furiously guarding of his soft parts. He has spent the better part of the week curling up into a ball in his free time or sleeping with his stomach mashed into the bed— some sort of natural instinct that hardwires him to protect those sensitive guts, that soft belly.

But even belly-down and curled up, head between his hands and elbows tucked up tight to the sides of his body he feels strapped, held open, naked.

And he _is_ — naked— spectacularly so with the exception of his still-socked feet. At least, he thinks, trying spectacularly hard not to clench his body into a ball, Aziraphale is clothed.

The thought soothes him, somehow, that his shitty lack of reciprocation in both the pleasuring earlier and the disrobing just now have left Aziraphale mostly out of the camera’s view.

As if in agreement, a warm, clothed body gets flattened and folded against him, all of him. Kisses get pressed along the mountain ridge of his spine. A mouth, finally, arrives near enough to his ear.

“If at any point you don’t like this just— tell me. I don’t want to hurt you,” he says into it, and Crowley isn’t sure if it’s the exposed position or Aziraphale’s voice in his ear that does it, but he experiences a strange full body shudder that starts in his neck and ends at his toes.

“I’m fucking _fine_ ,” he gasps out, not sounding it at all.

There is a single kiss pressed against his shoulder in acknowledgement and then he’s gone, and Crowley can hear the plastic cap popping open on the lubricant, the disgusting wet sound of a large amount of it being squeezed out.

He thinks of that night in Aziraphale’s bookshop, the backroom, discussing things in the abstract. He remembers arguing for the merits of purchasing an industrial sized bottle of lubricant from a third-party seller, saying that they would be the most cost effective long-term. He holds onto that thought, feeling vindicated, and considers that at the time he had wildly misjudged the amount of lube that Aziraphale would use. At this rate they are going to need at least _two_ bottles.

There is another kiss pressed into him, this time somewhere on the stretched skin of his rump and he shifts away from it, not strictly comfortable with Aziraphale’s face being _anywhere_ near an area that he hadn’t stressed-cleaned in the last twenty minutes. And then wet, _cold_ fingers are pressed against him.

He yelps.

“Sorry,” is the softly murmured apology. “Too cold?”

“S’fine,” he breathes out, face mashed into the bed.

And it _is_. Better than fine, even. The exterior bit of rubbing is lovely and again, surprisingly sensitive and Crowley imagines that if _this_ is all that is expected of him he’d get off on it just fine.

Aziraphale appears to be of the same mind, having clearly read some sort of intensive finger-painting guidebook to anal sex over the course of Crowley’s nap. He seems incredibly content to draw different shapes across this most sensitive of areas using every finger, sometimes two, occasionally a thumb.

“You’d better not be laying wards on me,” Crowley says into the bedsheets.

There’s a breathless laugh behind him and fuck, Satan, _someone_ — is laughing even allowed? They can do that? He catches it like some kind of infective joy and huffs out a disbelieving humor of his own, his spine relaxing, the tension falling out of his shoulders.

“I promised I wouldn’t,” Aziraphale murmurs, and it’s clearly his thumb this time, making tiny circles.

There is a moment of worry over the camera mic catching all of this, _any_ of this, their conversation out of context— but the worry floats away beneath an increased sort of urgency, an increasingly frenetic pleasure.

“More,” he says, into the bed again, nearly ashamed.

That sensitivity seems to have moved inside of him, an ache somewhere to be filled, or breached, perhaps from Aziraphale knocking at the door for so long and his body finally deciding he could be let in.

“Are you sure?”

It’s the index finger— or maybe the middle one, making tiny Xs, figure-eights, asterisks.

“Yes,” he bites out, desirous suddenly of having something in his mouth to chew on, bite into. He has that thought of it being too soft again, too _sweet_ , the kid-glove treatment spilling over into sex acts and he doesn’t like the implication that he isn’t demon enough to be rough with.

A finger sinks in the smallest bit, or maybe _not_ the smallest bit but what is distance right now with his head mashed into the blankets and Aziraphale squeezing out more lubricant with his free hand, enough to slide down the crease of him and onto the sheets.

“You’re buying me new sheets,” he huffs out, and Aziraphale laughs again, breathlessly and disbelievingly and there is a mouth at the small of his back, pressing distracting kisses there.

“Of course,” Aziraphale murmurs against his skin, and Crowley can feel him smile.

He sucks his lip into his mouth, bites on it. It feels… better, he supposes, than before. Perhaps from being so recently penetrated or maybe it’s the laughter, the comfort. Some knowledge that it’s just the two of them still, nothing has changed, Aziraphale won’t judge him.

 _You could not ever disappoint me._

The thought flares and then disappears, still too big to chew on, too large to swallow.

“You’re so lovely,” Aziraphale murmurs again, pulling out, pushing in, and it’s uncomfortable and thrilling. He’s not lovely, he _couldn’t_ be, and his stomach twists in both denial and delight at the praise, glad at least that he doesn’t have to visually witness the intense cone of Aziraphale’s attention.

There are clothed knees nudging his legs apart, just a bit, and then a hand wrapping around his sex from the back, stroking him off leisurely.

“Fuck,” he breathes out, twisting the sheets in his hands.

“Good, darling?”

Crowley bites on the blanket beneath his mouth, nodding, rocking back. There is a furious desire to enjoy this, a certain gritting of his teeth and forcing of his muscles to relax, find pleasure, let go. He tells himself in no uncertain terms to get the fuck out of his own head. Do not think about messes. Relax. Fuck.

 _You could not ever disappoint me_.

There is a mouth against the small of his back again, whispering into his spine, obviously noting the clenching of his muscles, the inability to chill the fuck out.

 _He won’t judge_ , he thinks, and flexes his jaw, tastes cotton, the bedsheets. _He won’t_.

Something is beginning to sink in— an understanding that makes his mind tighten in anxiety every time he tries to focus on it, like a ghost that meanders in the periphery.

“More,” he says, because perhaps some sort of sensory overload will drown out his thoughts, kill the ghost, focus him. “Come on.”

He tries to turn his brain off and concentrate instead on the slight sounds of Aziraphale breathing, the careful grip of his hand, the gentle press of his fingers. He thinks about being on his office chair— that brief and clear moment of _want_ that had broken through the anxiety.

“Are you sure?”

Crowley rubs his face into the bed, the glasses akimbo, his back relaxing, his hips sagging. It’s a steady, slight pleasure— dulled perhaps by the lack of visual input: no fluffy fair head to stare at, no naked forearms framed by carefully rolled back shirtsleeves, no pink angelic dick.

His eyes snap open, remembering the not-inconsiderable girth of the cock he had volunteered to take.

“Yeah,” he swallows. He wants to say something like, _get on with it_ , or maybe, _just fuck me already_ because at least then he will feel less breakable, less delicate.

Aziraphale is making altogether distracting and lovely noises behind him, enough to tide him over as the hand on his cock disappears to squeeze out more lubricant. And then another finger gets added, the hand stroking him off returns. It burns but he’s expecting it and it’s far less invasive feeling this time, perhaps, he considers, wiggling back a bit, even _good_.

He rocks back against him, trying to summon up the fantasies he had often pleasured himself over here, in this same bed, with this same angel, _before_. Aziraphale inside him and saying his name, fucking him into the mattress, against the wall, the door. He closes his eyes and sinks back into that headspace, reminding himself that he had wanted this once, and it’s what had gotten him into this whole mess to begin with.

“You’re so warm,” Aziraphale is saying, over and over again with tiny appreciative gasps that make Crowley’s toes curl. He isn’t sure how to respond, if he even _should_ respond, so he closes his eyes and makes a noise that he hopes is agreeable, tries to get over the foreign sensation of being poked and prodded from the rear. 

There’s a spot, somewhere, that will make all of this feel exceptional and worth it and he shifts ineffectively, beginning to think that such a feeling had been a mirage, a figment of his imagination.

“Angel.”

He says it without thinking, feeling that familiar tightening fear, an anxiety that has nothing to do with the camera and everything to do with his body betraying him on some fundamental level, leaking in ways he doesn’t want.

Aziraphale’s warm body gets folded over close to him again, his arm wedged between them, warm and strong and Crowley can feel butt of his palm at the top of the crease of him, fingers still curled inside of him. It’s a shockingly intimate thing to realize in the abstract. Aziraphale is inside of him. Actually. Empirically.

“You okay?”

“Am I— is there—?”

Crowley crushes his face against the bed again, ignoring the uncomfortable press of his glasses. He refuses to look over at him, he _won’t_.

“You’re perfect. Don’t worry.”

A kiss is pressed against his shoulder blade, where a wing might be if he still had such things, and then there’s pressure, and heat, and a hell of a lot of pleasure as Aziraphale finds that spot that clearly _isn’t_ a mirage.

Crowley gasps into the bed, trying to catch his breath. It’s that same intense pressure, pleasure that manages to be both muted and intense, spread out rather than localized.

“Okay, _okay_ — fuck me.”

“Are you ready? You want this?”

He sounds so wildly earnest, despite the performed voice, the low octave.

“You’re not gonna _hurt_ me just— just _do it_.”

He flexes back onto those fingers, forward into Aziraphale’s hand, aware that he is like a rutting animal and not particularly caring. If Hell wants to watch this horror-show of awkward sex and utter anxiety that, he supposes, is on them.

The hands disappear, there’s more lube being audibly squeezed out and Crowley alters the number of industrial sized bottles in his head to _three_ and not _two_. He should just start a tab at Boots, become a regular. _Hi Joe, gimme 118 ml of your finest silicone vintage. Top it off with some KY._

He laughs somewhat hysterically into the sheets, gripping them desperately between his fists.

“It’s okay.”

He can hear Aziraphale murmuring it softly, hands petting up and down his sides and trying to soothe him like he is a spooked animal. Which he is, he supposes. An animal. Not an eldritch terror and not a demon, not quite, not anymore. 

Crowley can hear the zipper on Aziraphale’s trousers descending, the clothed sigh of fabric moving out of the way. He hadn’t even touched him, not once, and there’s regret, again, stuck in his throat because he isn’t sure whether Aziraphale had been desirous of such touching or not and he _should have asked_.

He shifts, feeling flayed.

The black towel makes an appearance out of the corner of his eye and with it a flood of anxiety so acute Crowley tastes something like a chemical burn in his mouth— but the towel never touches him, not on purpose, Aziraphale merely using it to wipe the excess Astroglide off his hand.

Crowley breathes through his teeth, opens his eyes to stare sightlessly down at the mattress.

“Okay?”

He can hear Aziraphale ask it and is amazed, again, at the tight control, always. They touch only at the strait of clothed knee to calf muscle, hands on the outsides of his hips, gentle and steady and non-expectant.

“Okay,” Crowley can hear himself respond, and there is a moment of something bubbling and hysterical in his throat as the broad and blunt tip of what is unmistakably a cock presses into him.

“I’ll go slowly.” Crowley can hear, somewhere behind him, but the sound gets lost in the thunder of his own heartbeat and his own blood flow drumming in his ears.

It’s hot. _Definitely_ too hot. And he feels like he is about to burn up from it, light on fire from inside. But he can hear the hitch in Aziraphale’s breath and he remembers what it had felt like to sheathe himself in angel entirely and the whole magnificent, filthy, _wonderful_ thing they are doing slams into sharp and exquisite focus.

It’s Aziraphale, Aziraphale, Aziraphale. _It’s okay._

He breathes out, bears down.

It is the slowest sink of all time— enough time, even, for his body to decide all at once that this is absolutely bloody fucking wonderful and yes, please, he would like all of the angel, right now, as deep as he will go. He is not delicate and _not_ fragile and in a heady rush of power he had not been expecting he slides himself back, bottoms out, _moans_.

It hurts, it burns. But Crowley has always liked a little bit of pain to garnish his pleasure and after a prolonged fingering on his throne and another on his bed this entire messy anal process has become amazingly easy, and slick, and absolutely, wildly, _obscenely_ divine.

He becomes aware of the rest of his skin, the exterior parts of himself, of Aziraphale’s broad and protective palm cupping the junction of neck and shoulder, of the other hand holding firm at his hip.

“Oh,” Crowley breathes, and his eyes fly open, he can’t catch his breath.

He’s not going to make it. This is it. It’s a cacophony of sensation and realization. Aziraphale is fucking him, this is not a fantasy and it’s not a dream. Aziraphale is wearing his bowtie and had bought a phone and is kneeling behind him, all the way inside.

“ _Fuck_.”

That damned white cliff is barreling toward him at an alarming rate even with absolutely no movement. He recognizes that perhaps Aziraphale can feel it— or is feeling it himself— and holds himself hip to skin, completely still, sunk in and breathing.

“Shh.”

That thumb on his neck rubs tiny soothing circles into his skin, giving him something else to focus on, to ground himself in.

“Angel,” he manages, and turns his head so he can perhaps look back. It’s a bad idea, he realizes immediately— from this angle he can see Aziraphale staring down at where they are joined, his bowtie askance and his mouth parted, his usually crisp shirt wrinkled. He looks both debauched and buttoned-up, prim and powerful.

“Fuck,” he gasps again, and endeavors not to look back again.

“Okay?” Aziraphale breathes, and Crowley rolls his head back down, nods emphatically.

He slides slowly out and Crowley is reminded again of grotesque human urges but it’s also strangely pleasurable, ecstasy buoyed up on taboo. It feels painful and invasive and too big and _right_ — so very, oddly right.

He shudders and exhales noisily into the sheets, not quite sure if he wants Aziraphale to move or to stay still, to stop and pull out or never leave.

He squeezes the blankets again, his muscles flexing in his back and he can feel Aziraphale’s hand sliding down between them, gripping his cock from the back— an index finger and a thumb looping around his base and _squeezing_.

“Fuck, _fuck_ , bloody fucking _Christ_.”

“Darling,” he warns.

Aziraphale, it seems, is not without his own struggles.

“Fuck me,” Crowley says, because it feels good to wield power like this. The angel deserves it for being a right bastard most of the time. “Come on, angel,” he says, and rolls his hips around, “do it.”

There is an unsteady exhale behind him and then Aziraphale moves, out and then back in, too slow and too fucking gentle.

“ _More_.”

Aziraphale just hums thoughtfully and moves slower.

“Aziraphale,” he huffs out, and straightens up on his arms, arching his back. “ _Harder_.”

“Hm,” Aziraphale says softly, a hand gentle and sweet on his hip, the other wrapped around him still. “Not yet.”

Crowley reaches a hand between them, to his own cock, taking over where Aziraphale’s is deficient. He isn’t sure whether it is from the sheer exhausting amount of time that Aziraphale had spent plastering him in lube or the multiple sets of penetrative acts in such a short span of day but the burn of Aziraphale’s cock is beginning to feel less _terrible_ and more _delightful_.

Bodies, he thinks, one shoulder falling to the mattress to support his weight, he has to hand it to them— they are fantastically accommodating.

“Hurry the hell up,” he bites, because Aziraphale seems content to just circle his hips and occasionally squeeze more lubricant between them. As if there isn’t enough.

Crowley considers that he’d misjudged Aziraphale’s understanding of his own strength— he is very clearly aware of it, he thinks, and how little he is sure Crowley can take.

He groans out, frustrated, sliding back and forth and trying to create his own friction. He receives a strong hand holding him still at his hip for his troubles.

“ _Aziraphale_ ,” he huffs out, annoyed. “M’not gonna _break_.”

He can feel the capacity for orgasm running swiftly out of him— the burn of sensation has quieted into a muted hum, nearly invisible, a whiting out. The edge of anxiety wedges in in its absence, reminding him of messes, of cameras, of shortcomings.

“Angel,” he murmurs, quietly enough. “Need more.”

“Okay,” is the breathed reply and then Aziraphale’s arm is looping beneath him, around him, a bar across his ribs pulling him upright.

“Up you go,” he says, as if he is helping Crowley up onto a horse instead of his own thighs, crushing him back against the angel’s chest. “This okay?” He murmurs, and Crowley nods, helplessly, his voice stuck in his throat.

He can’t breathe, not quite, the shift into this upright position clearly making Aziraphale’s cock punch into his lungs.

“Okay,” he manages, eventually, because Aziraphale feels huge and vaguely frightening and is also pressing on that spot that makes his brain short circuit. “Yes. More. Let’s go.”

He attempts to move, to rise up on his own legs perhaps, fall back down. But Aziraphale holds him, firm and gentle.

“Not too much, darling.”

“Fuck you,” he breathes out. “ _Come on_.”

“Don’t want to hurt you,” he says softly, his nose butting against Crowley’s jaw. “Relax.”

“You won’t,” Crowley manages, gasping and squirming in his hold. “ _More_.”

“This is good,” Aziraphale just murmurs in reply. “ _Please_.”

It is too soft, too pleasurable, too _good._ He needs something hard and sharp. A knife to cut through the buttery perfection of it all. Something to remind him that he doesn’t deserve this, doesn’t deserve _him_.

He whimpers out something pathetic and shivers, unable to press back against Aziraphale saying _please_. Whatever he needs, Crowley thinks, and closes his eyes, bites down hard on his lip.

Aziraphale, seeing perhaps what he is doing-- providing the necessary sharpness— grips his chin with his clean hand, offers a thumb against Crowley’s lips.

He welcomes it readily, sucking it between his teeth, hungry for a multitude of connections and he’s _clever_ , Aziraphale, of course he is. Because now Crowley _can’t_ bite down— on himself or on the thing in his mouth because the thing in his mouth is Aziraphale.

“That’s better, darling,” he murmurs. “Just feel good.”

Crowley makes a hideous whimper around the thumb in his mouth and closes his eyes up tight.

“You’re so good, darling,” Aziraphale whispers in his ear. “You deserve—“ his breath hitches for a moment on a particularly slow press of his hips, “—only good things.”

And Crowley can’t decide why he’s saying it— the camera mic can’t hear him, not from back there, not with this small of a whisper and he is in no need of assistance in achieving or maintaining an erection. The hand stroking him off in slow, tortuous harmony with the dick moving inside him is proof enough.

There is a kiss pressed just beneath his ear and he shivers in the cage of those arms holding him.

He moans out something around the thumb in his mouth and hopes Aziraphale can understand it, can read by now what it means when the sweat breaks out down his spine, when his whines get high pitched and desperate.

And he must— in some capacity— because the hand around him strokes the smallest bit faster, the tiniest bit harder. Aziraphale’s own hips speed up by a fraction of a fraction, his breath suddenly a ragged, broken thing beating out against Crowley’s ear.

He reaches up and holds desperately onto the arm across his chest, the one still cradling his chin. The thighs he is centered on split open a little wider, press up a little faster. The pressure inside of him feels immense, too big, too much, too good.

“Can you come for me?” a voice is saying, behind him, around him. The thumb pulls out of his mouth and cups against his collarbones, holding him tightly. 

“Oh,” he breathes out, gasping furiously and shivering and it feels too hot, too _wet_. It spans dueling sensations of _too much_ and _not enough_ and it’s frustrating and divine and terrible. He feels small and precious and protected, guarded against himself. “Shit. Fuck. Someone, _yes_.”

“Please,” Aziraphale says softly against his skin. “ _Please_.”

He finds himself nodding helplessly, pleasure rising and cresting until his muscles squeeze painfully tight around an impossible thickness, a deliciously sharp sort of agony.

He isn’t sure who comes first, is aware only distantly that Aziraphale is holding him carefully, forehead pressed into his ear, his neck. And there’s a swelling of something like pride or maybe power that he had also somehow reduced Aziraphale to pleas and whimpers, to desperate hands holding onto him.

There is a sustained sort of mutual cry as they come down from it, a harmony that clears out the thunder of his own breathing and his own blood flow in his ears.

The room is quiet again, bracketed by only their labored breathing and the sounds of life in adjacent apartments. And he becomes aware, all at once, that he would very much like Aziraphale _out_ of his body and for the mess currently dripping down his legs to be gone, completely, and for him perhaps to be immersed in a cold shower. His throat hurts. He clearly needs water.

Aziraphale’s hand rises slowly up and snaps, the motion tired and shaky and Crowley is going to give him about four breaths before he starts freaking out.

Aziraphale beats him to it.

“Are you okay? Did I hurt you?” He pulls back from his neck and their skin is _soaked_ , sweat-drenched even though Crowley isn’t sure when that happened. Aziraphale’s shirt is probably damp through with Crowley’s sweat and he has exactly half a second of calm before anxiety pierces him like an arrow.

“Fuck, wait— are you, hang on.”

He leans over and attempts to grab the Mess Contingency Plan towel without dislodging Aziraphale and is only mildly successful.

“Okay, yeah. Don’t look. Just. I don’t know.”

“What,” Aziraphale huffs out, peeling his front away from Crowley’s back, “are you doing?”

He pulls ever so slowly out, and there leaving with him is a disgustingly wet sound of lube and ejaculate and air and Crowley would like very much to curl up somewhere and perish.

“Jesus fucking _Christ,_ tell me you did not hear that.”

“I did not hear anything.”

“You’re lying, you bastard. _Fuck_ , okay, here, _take this_.”

He turns around and wraps the towel around Aziraphale’s cock, which is, in retrospect, probably a bad move. The thing is probably rather cold.

Aziraphale sucks in a surprised breath.

“What are you doing?” He asks, looking down at the black towel draped across his lap.

“Shower, now. Let’s go.”

“I’m quite fine, I assure you.”

“You’re covered in sweat and lube and— and I don’t know what’s under the towel let’s just _go_ to the _shower_ and—“

“Fine,” Aziraphale huffs, clearly frustrated and at the _give Crowley whatever he wants_ stage. “Okay, shower.”

It occurs to Crowley that he is fantastically naked as he hobbles his way to the bathroom. His knees don’t seem to work right, his hips have taken the evening off.

There is, he realizes, a rather alarming amount of liquid sliding out of him and down his thighs and he pushes Aziraphale ahead of him down the hallway, so that the angel doesn’t have to look at him, the mess, any of it.

“Are you okay?” Aziraphale asks, untying his bowtie while the shower water heats. He is polite enough that he is still holding the towel across his lap with one hand. “Did I hurt you? You never answered me.”

“You didn’t,” Crowley says, and wraps a towel around himself.

The waistcoat goes and then the shirt, the undershirt, the socks. The mirror fogs.

He tests it with one hand and then tugs on Aziraphale’s arm, feeling scattershot and dizzy, burnt clean down to the purest anxiety.

“Okay, trousers just— just don’t look.”

Aziraphale stands naked save for the Mess Contingency Brand washcloth, looking tired and long-suffering and perhaps the faintest bit fond.

“I won’t look.”

“Good, okay.”

Crowley pushes him into the shower, tries to stay out of the spray of it, to keep the towel around his waist at least somewhat dry.

“Soap, and here, don’t look I can—“

He blinks.

It seems to slam into him headlong that he has just manhandled Aziraphale into a shower and is now attacking him with a bar of cheap soap that may or may not give him hives. He puts it shakily back onto its tray.

“Sorry,” he breathes. “I didn’t— I shouldn’t have—“

“It’s fine. Come in, we might as well not waste water.”

Crowley blinks and sways and feels locked to the tile floor, stray droplets of water globing up on his glasses.

“No it’s— I shouldn’t. I’ll give you space.”

“ _Crowley_ ,” Aziraphale says, with his eyes closed and water flattening his white curls into darkened silver ringlets. “Come here. Please. If you’d like.”

His hands hesitate on the towel, and then release it, letting it join Aziraphale’s clothing on the floor outside the shower.

He flexes his hands, his jaw, shifts from foot to foot. For Christ’s sake he should _not_ feel so nervous about this— they had just had _sex_ , on camera, and yet climbing into a shower with him feels unfamiliar and frightening. A level of exposure that cannot be quantified by a camera or a loss of virginity.

“I do hope I didn’t— I was very worried,” Aziraphale says, in the midst of soaping up his arms, his hands. He is very visibly turned away from him, out of shyness perhaps, some nervousness of his own.

“You didn’t. Really.” The ache between his legs seems to pulse in disagreement.

“Was it okay?”

Crowley shifts and steps into the water, up close to him, wondering how to politely go about the task of cleaning up the unholy cocktail of goo between his thighs.

“Yeah,” he breathes. “It was.”

He reaches up and pulls off his glasses, rubs a weary hand into his face, relaxes into the shower spray. He opens them to the sight of Aziraphale outlined in silver afternoon light from the singular window, the rainstorm from earlier having quieted into a muted grey drizzle.

He watches from the corner of his eye as Aziraphale turns toward him, something like a smile on his face. And then he watches the smile pause, stagnate, reverse.

“Crowley,” he says simply.

Crowley threads his eyebrows together at him, confused for the briefest moment, and then registers that he can see— it’s bright, his glasses, _oh no_.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale says again, and cannot seem to say anything else.

Well, Crowley thinks, fuck.

“Hi, angel,” he breathes, and can feel his heart sink into the pit of his stomach. “So, I think my eyes might be green.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "back in" simply means that the break (lunch/whatever) is over and the work is starting up again.
> 
> many many thanks to all of the comments/reblogs/anons/discord love. oh my god. life has been real up and down lately and you are all a source of continual joy. thank you SO MUCH. I love you.
> 
> I am going to make an attempt to shorten the chapters and update more regularly because these behemoths are an absolute terror to deal with. thanks again, stay groovy, you're awesome <3


	12. double exposure #3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a brief lil thing that I wrote drunk off my ass this very evening. I have been stuck in the mud on the next Crowley POV chapter and it is apparently because Aziraphale had a lot to say. Bastard angel. 
> 
> Not a behemoth this round, about 2.7k but the next chapter won't be very long coming <3

There is, Aziraphale realizes, no longer the smell of smoke in his hair. 

It has always been there, _always_. Since the very first day on the very first wall, residue of his demonic ancestry. A damp sort of charcoal smell, like fresh earth and forest fire. It had followed Crowley from century to century, had never changed, despite whatever he tried to cover it up with: a strict personal hygiene schedule and a multitude of ever-changing colognes, perfumed soap, an untold number of cigarettes to blame it on.

It isn’t what he should be thinking, he knows, not while pressed all the way inside of him still and trying to catch his breath. Not while Crowley gulps down lungfuls of air like a drowning man and the camera still rolls. Not while sweat and semen glue them together.

Blood roars and then quiets in his ears. He holds Crowley’s collarbone in his hand.

No smoke.

He inhales again and it’s gone, all of it, scrubbed away by mortality and perhaps the terrible soap that had possibly given Crowley hives. He had noticed it halfway through crushing Crowley against his chest, a surprise that he had gulped down with a quiet _please_ , an urge for gentleness; a surprise he had hoped to be something else— a mere cover up of the smoke by the smell of sex, the damp of sweat.

But it’s still gone, not here, as if it never had been.

There is only the sound of their syncopated breathing in the room, the whirring of a camera many years out of date. Aziraphale sticks his nose once more into the nape of Crowley’s neck, where his hair is damp and flattened against his skin in dark auburn vines, and breathes.

_No smoke._

He pulls back, lifts a hand. It shakes as he snaps on account of something like fear and an exhaustion that has nothing to do with exertion.

The camera powers off, Crowley does not move. His tendons and bones feel so spare and stretched beneath his skin they seem ready to knife through it, rip clean out. He is not sure why Crowley isn’t moving, why he is held so impossibly still, head bowed, lungs breathing. Had he hurt him? He must have. Somehow.

The fear gets caught in his throat.

“Are you okay?” He asks, and pulls his clothed front away from Crowley’s naked back. “Did I hurt you?”

He is soaked through with sweat and lubricant, his clothes suction to his skin. He wants nothing more than to peel out of them, stick his nose back into the shadows behind Crowley’s ear, hunt for that smell he doesn’t want to forget.

“Fuck, wait,” Crowley finally says, and writhes under him. It feels electric even in a less turgid state. “Are you— hang on.”

Aziraphale watches as that fair freckled back shifts, muscles bunching and flexing and it’s like some kind of art, a kinetic sculpture. The skin flushes red and mottled pink. He is reaching for the towel and Aziraphale has half a mind of telling him he could have gotten it for him but bites his tongue, reminding himself of their conversation over lunch.

“Okay, yeah. Don’t look,” Crowley huffs out, jerky and uncertain, and Aziraphale gets to watch as a spectacular flush rises along the back of his neck, fever-red and hot. “Just. I don’t know.” 

He wants to palm that neck again, stroke it with his thumb. Assure him that whatever is happening is okay, _I’ll fix it, let me._ But he can’t, he knows, aware acutely of how much Crowley prickles when offered help or reassurance. A pride that is woven into the fabric of his being.

“What,” Aziraphale breathes out, watching Crowley shifting uncomfortably and prickly himself with his inability to help, this kneecapping of his urges, “are you doing?”

It appears as though Crowley would like him _out_ of his body, a sentiment that Aziraphale can understand if not empathize with. So he pulls ever so slowly out, aware that Astroglide is not eternal and sweat is a poor lubricant.

“Jesus fucking _Christ_ , tell me you did not hear that.”

He did, of course he did. But Aziraphale prides himself on etiquette and while he does not know whether Emily Post ever wrote about such a thing, he is certain that the denying of particular bodily sounds would be a preeminent rule in her handbook.

“I did not hear anything.”

Crowley, being Crowley, calls him out on it.

“You’re lying, you bastard.” The skin in front of him flushes pink again, a full-body blush. “ _Fuck_ , okay, here, _take this_.”

And then the towel, the wet one, the _cold_ wet one that he had used to wipe a lubricant-covered hand on at some point during their lovemaking, is flung unceremoniously onto his lap. Aziraphale nearly yelps.

“What are you doing?” He asks, looking down at it and then realizing all at once that perhaps Crowley does not want to look at him. The thing that had just been inside of him. Not lovemaking, he reminds himself. Sex. 

He looks up to see Crowley clambering off the bed, all elbows and knees.

“Shower, now,” he says, and Aziraphale can see his hand shaking. “Let’s go.”

“I’m quite fine, I assure you.”

Crowley slings a hand into his hair, yanking it out of whatever style it had been tenuously holding onto, naked and trembling and _no smoke_ , Aziraphale thinks. He no longer smells like smoke.

“You’re covered in sweat and lube and— and I don’t know what’s under the towel let’s just _go_ to the _shower_ and—“

Annoyance stings the corner of Aziraphale’s eyes. They had just made love— no, _had sex_ — for the first time in a mildly successful way, had just kissed and moaned and shivered their way to a mostly simultaneous finish and Crowley no longer smells like smoke and he’s worried about _messes_. _Human_ messes. A thing that feels so wildly out of touch and unimportant that Aziraphale has to swallow down the vitriol that he wants to spit back in his face.

He remembers the conversation at lunch. The line he is forced to walk with his stubborn, ridiculous, _fractious_ friend. Eggshells beneath every footfall.

“ _Fine_ ,” he hisses. “Okay. _Shower_.”

He follows him down the hallway, dutifully holding the insulting towel to his skin and he wants to fling it on the floor, tell Crowley every tightly withheld mote of anger that he keeps biting down.

 _Messes_. As if such a thing means anything, _anything_ , in the grand scheme of things. As if Aziraphale would be turned away by such a tiny and inconsequential thing. As if he hadn’t been a steward of humankind for six-thousand years, before aqueducts and indoor plumbing, before certain standards of personal grooming and the language to talk about it. He wants to walk himself out of Crowley’s front door and shake the nearest human he finds, demand to know how they deal with insecurities that mean so very little while spinning away on a chunk of rock hurtling through space.

And what an _insult_ , he seethes, following, until Crowley pushes him ahead, perhaps aware of his own nudity while walking down the hallway. He wonders whether Crowley really thinks so little of him, demanding yet again that he wear a glove and not look, strung so tight on this the most ridiculous of anxieties.

“Are you okay?” He asks, because he has to, because he can’t _not_ ask it. Because Crowley is trembling all over, he realizes, his knees shaking, his arms quivering. There is a spectacular level of vascularity taking place along the whipcord length of his arms, starting mid bicep and threading down to his hands, demonstrative of a functional human bloodstream, blood pressure that is ratcheted high.

“Did I hurt you?” Aziraphale asks again, his bowtie off, fumbling at the buttons of his shirt with one hand. “You never answered me.”

He regrets asking it, watching as Crowley fumbles for a towel to wrap around his waist, looking lean and wired tight. _Skinny_ , Aziraphale’s mind unhelpfully supplies. He looks skinny and frail, perhaps on account of the trembling muscles. And Aziraphale had— had—

The word _fucked_ rises in his mouth but he swallows it down. He hadn’t _, he hadn’t_. He had tried not to. Aware when they had started of how human Crowley had become and aware during of how much worse he is than Aziraphale thought. No smoke. And Aziraphale is strong, he knows he is— knows it on account of his angelic ranking, the gift of a place he no longer calls home.

He hadn’t fucked him. It had been more gentle than that. He hopes.

“You didn’t,” Crowley says, and the room fills with a wet heat.

Aziraphale stands on the tile, watching Crowley test the water, the long lines of his body beautiful outlined in sweat and steam. A masterwork in clean lines, nothing wasted. And then he is pulling on Aziraphale’s arm, a display of familiarity and comfort so easy Aziraphale nearly forgets how they got here, why they’re doing this.

“Okay, trousers just— just don’t look.”

Messes, Aziraphale thinks again. He wants to shake this absurd serpent of his. Maybe kiss him on the mouth for real this time, no cameras, tell him to stop, _he’s safe._ _You could not disappoint me_.

But he can’t, not yet, not with nine hours of film left to make. Not with his life hinged on their success of those nine remaining hours. Because the thought that Crowley might call the whole thing off— he is certainly strung tightly enough to make such an irrational and hot-blooded decision— tightens a noose around Aziraphale’s throat, a garrote that twists each time he feels angry and self-righteous, ready to give Crowley a piece of his mind and tell him how he really feels. About all of it. Every bit of it. The hurtful language and the weirdness that floats between them, the awkwardness that had never been there before. The elephant in the room that they refuse to talk about in open and decent terms— _you’re dying. I love you. Let me help._

“I won’t look,” he promises instead. Because at least he can grant him that.

“Good, okay.”

Crowley pushes him into the shower and Aziraphale lets him do it, aware of how he needs this, to allay an insecurity that Aziraphale cannot convince him to abandon.

“Soap, and here, don’t look I can—“

And then Crowley pauses, a flush walking up his neck again. He looks guilty, or confused, as if he had just woken up from a fit of somnambulance.

“ _Sorry_. I didn’t— I shouldn’t have.”

There are water droplets speckling his dark glasses, the towel around his hips is growing dark with wet.

“It’s fine,” Aziraphale says, and can feel the heat of anger flowing out of him. To err is human, he thinks, and keeps his promise— not looking as he lets the washcloth drop. “Come in, we might as well not waste water.”

Crowley sways a bit, as if at war with himself.

“No it’s— I shouldn’t. I’ll give you space.”

Aziraphale sucks on the back of his teeth, has half a mind of telling Crowley how ridiculous it is that he is choosing _now_ of all times to have a shred of propriety.

“ _Crowley_.”

Aziraphale sticks his face into the water and can feel it washing away his frustration. He’ll be patient. They’ll make it. Nine hours. They have time.

“Come here. Please.” He realizes that he sounds a bit demanding and adds, “if you’d like.”

He can hear the towel drop, the shuffling of a body close to his. Small steps. Perhaps pained ones. Aziraphale can remember the rather spectacular ache that had accosted him after his own, however brief, experience of penetration.

Regret grips him. A plan to somehow care for Crowley’s body wells up and he attempts to squash it. A residual angelic instinct. It’s not wanted. _It’s not_.

But still he thinks of soft pillows he can slide beneath his chair, a miraculously cold compress, distractionary methods that will perhaps include letting Crowley pick a film to watch (he hopes it is not another in the horror genre, although he already is setting himself up for disappointment), gentle massages along those finely boned hands, an offer of paracetamol and to detangle his hair.

“I do hope I didn’t,” Aziraphale starts, soaping up his arms in an attempt to keep himself from folding Crowley into an embrace that will not be wanted. “I was very worried.” He still is.

“You didn’t,” Crowley says softly. “Really.”

“Was it okay?”

He hates himself for asking it, for pressing against a bruise. Perhaps it hadn’t been. And then where would they be? Crowley might try to be polite and assuage his fear or else he will be blunt and make things awkward. Nine hours. No smoke.

“Yeah. It was.”

He can feel Crowley step up close to him and some bit of the wired tightness between them relaxes, releases. The anxiety seems to have flowed down the drain, Crowley relaxing, soothed maybe by the idea of water washing away the main ingredient of his insecurity.

It reminds Aziraphale of before. Before all of this. Back when there had been smoke in Crowley’s hair and familiarity in their movements. When they hadn’t kissed, not yet, but he hadn’t needed to to know what Crowley tasted like.

Smoke.

A pair of dark glasses appear on the tray next to the soap, Crowley having finally taken them off. It occurs to Aziraphale that he hasn’t seen him without them on all morning, all afternoon, and the idea of finally looking his friend in the eye feels almost too comforting to bear. He’s smiling, of course he is, because maybe things will be okay. Nine hours. They have time.

He turns and ducks out of the spray of water, thinking of that time on the wall, a wing over Crowley’s head to protect him from the rain. There is the very beginning of a memory on his lips. About to tell him, _remember when we didn’t know? About water? Rain? Now look at us_.

But the face is different than the one he had seen on that wall, the first time.

It takes him a heartbeat to notice it, uncertain at first at what the difference is— his hair is wet, unusual but not remarkable, and the aquiline nose is the same, there is the same sharp jaw, the same good cheekbones. Aziraphale blinks, and breathes, and all the muscles in his face go suddenly slack.

The infinite black of his infernal pupils are no longer delicate cats-eye ovals. They are rounder, softer, _human._ And beyond them, the color is all wrong, the solid star-heart gold is woven with nebulous threads of emerald, bits of near blue, dark brown.

No smoke.

His heart stops and stutters and restarts, throws itself into his ribs, circulates something that is less like blood and more like acid.

“Crowley,” he says, because he cannot make his throat say anything else.

He watches Crowley’s rounded pupils blow briefly wide, shock and regret registering on the slow shifting of his face. He looks down, heaves an inhale, an exhale that seems to come from some place deeper than his chest.

It’s Crowley but it’s not, it can’t be, they still have time. He watches what used to occasionally be a forked tongue suck at his teeth, as if unsure of what to say. Aziraphale wants to take it from him, the burden. Tell him to say nothing. Bury it. Put the glasses back on. _We don’t have to talk about this_. They still have time. There might again be smoke.

But Crowley has never been good at shutting up. It is, after all, the quality that had gotten them into this entire unfortunate mess.

Messes, Aziraphale thinks.

“Hi, angel,” Crowley says, looking back up and turning those uncanny eyes back onto him. “I think my eyes might be green.”

And the only thing that Aziraphale can think is, _yes, my darling, I do believe they are._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I owe so many people comment replies. You're all getting me through life and I appreciate the response to this beyond words. Sincerely. You're bomb. I love you. 
> 
> (also I am NOT kidding when I say I wrote this while intoxicated and I am flinging it onto the internet before I can feel too self-conscious about it so please be gentle if you encounter typos. I'll fix them when I am more sober)


	13. room tone

There are a string of heartbeats between them, ticking out the minutes. Crowley counts them in lieu of panicking.

One, two, three, four.

Aziraphale has not moved, those pale blue veins indicative once again of marble, of a statue, something solid and immoveable. Crowley cannot tell if it’s shock or something else that holds him still, expression carefully blank, eyes moving and taking in the changed topography of Crowley’s face, the migration of color: a shift from gold to green, red stubble surely peeking out already along his jaw, a pinkness to his cheeks that belies a demonic heritage.

One, two, three, four.

They stand breathing in a halo of silver light for another four heartbeats, another blink, another exhale. And then Aziraphale moves, toward him, and Crowley experiences a moment of pure heat as he imagines that the angel is about to embrace him, crush him up tight in a hug.

But he doesn’t, sliding instead behind him and there are hands on Crowley’s shoulders, pushing him solidly forward into the water.

“You,” he says, in a broken whisper, and then says nothing else.

Crowley isn’t sure if he wants privacy or something more, some quiet moment to digest the fact that the demon he has known for six thousand years might not last another twenty. It’s a sobering thought, even if the color of his eyes that morning had been more of a pleasant surprise than a negative one.

So Crowley scrubs at his skin with the terrible soap, shampoos his hair with shaking fingers, endeavors entirely not to turn around just yet. And it’s… nice. Comfortable somehow. A reaffirmation of the pleasant platonic familiarity that had existed before— in the the times when his body worked on account of expectation and not in accordance with its own leaking whims.

There is a memory in his mouth, his throat, and he wants to say, _remember when?_ _Before? Rome?_ Those times when there had been public bath houses and optional clothing, the ability to be stripped down to the human skins they wear— an acceptance that had been easy to understand in daylight, with strangers, but not at all at night, in the bookshop. That had been a place of tightly buttoned collars and overly layered clothing, shoes and even jackets left on. It still is, Crowley thinks, whenever the camera isn’t rolling.

There is a soft touch on his shoulder, smoothing away a bit of soap, an errant bubble. The gentleness is shocking. He had been expecting fireworks, angelic fury, something hot and not easily swallowed. Tears even. _Panic_.

But there is instead silence, something stretched thin and delicate. Aziraphale stalwart and strong behind him, buttoned-up. And there’s regret, of course there is, that Aziraphale had to find out like this— naked in a shared shower after an intense and entirely human experience. But the spray of water feels baptismal in its urgency, washing away a weight he hadn’t realized he’d been carrying. The truth, he thinks with far too much bitterness in his mouth, had set him marginally free.

He sticks his face into the shower water and scrubs too hard at his skin, all of his front, between his legs. Of course he would find out like this, he thinks, not one of his plans had ever worked out as he had intended in the past and there is no sense in such things working out now. Not for something like this.

He counts heartbeats.

One, two, three, four.

Aziraphale is still behind him, visible from Crowley’s periphery, quiet and looking at him— searching for other changes maybe. Something he had not seen before.

And for all the attention usually makes him feel highly visible on a cellular level, wildly uncomfortable and highlighting all of his many, many flaws, it feels now strangely protective. An angel, quite literally, watching his back.

Crowley swallows and attempts to work his throat. It aches.

“Are you…?

“Yes.”

It’s a breathless answer to an unknowable question. Crowley himself is not quite certain what he had been planning to ask. Are you okay? Are you angry? Are you questioning what the future looks like?

But buoyed up by the affirmative Crowley turns around to face him, shoulders hitched up high to his ears and he wishes he weren’t so naked. This would be _so much easier_ if he were not naked.

The shower water fades from hot to warm to cold and he shifts into the bite of the cool water to turn it off, turn back around.

There is no safe place to look, not really, not between Aziraphale’s carefully blank face and incredible nudity. The shower walls feel like two hands, cupping them within the transparent fingers of a massive palm. A microcosm in glass.

Aziraphale looks as though he is trying to speak, his throat moving, his chest trembling. There is the percussive beat of his heart throwing itself right there at the hollow of his throat, in plain view. Fireworks, Crowley thinks, and considers that perhaps they are taking place internally.

And for all Aziraphale can be an incredibly still being— taken to moving in slow graces over long periods of time— here, naked and dripping and non-responsive, he is fantastically full of movement. The butterfly flap of his eyelashes, the shift of a strong throat as he swallows. Crowley would like very much to categorize them all— the march of a heartbeat across his chest, the push of blood through the veins in his shoulders, witness entirely the slow shifting of his immortal sands up close.

“When…?”

The question drips down the walls like condensation. Crowley can drown in it.

“This morning,” he says, and leans back against the glass. The chill bites into his skin and he presses back into it, feeling masochistic. “Pretty shocking, right?”

His legs form an ungainly isosceles with the wall and floor, his feet are still pink with blisters. Pale toes appear next to his, Aziraphale creating a more elegant triangle with a recline of his own.

“Yes,” he says quietly, and his hands— not that Crowley is looking— are folded demurely over his lap, over the thing that had just been inside of him. “It is.”

“I never meant— I didn’t want you to find out like this.”

Aziraphale’s hair is performing a fantastic sort of magic trick, coiling up as the water drips off of him.

“Like what?”

Crowley looks around the walls of his shower in explanation, then at himself, and finally slides down until he is seated on the floor.

“Oh, I don’t know. Butt-streaking naked in a shower I forced you into?”

He refuses to look at him, he _won’t._

 _One, two, three, four_.

There is the ridiculous squeaking sound of skin on glass and then Aziraphale seated across from him, a mirror. The hair on his legs shines white over the pink of his skin. 

“You didn’t force me.”

Crowley presses his forehead into his knees and there is a bead of aggravating water sliding down the back of his neck. He ignores it.

“You don’t have to be so nice all the time, you know.”

The words sting even himself, venom welling up near his teeth. Maybe he isn’t so human after all.

Aziraphale’s silence punches like a bullet. He has a moment of sharp regret at his own unsavory tone, always, and lifts his head to make amends.

“I am not just being _nice_ ,” Aziraphale says, beating him to it, and is looking out at their clothing on the floor.

“Aren’t you?”

He bites his tongue, presses his forehead back down into his knees.

“Listen,” he says into his patella, “I appreciate you doing all this. You have no idea.”

“Appreciate—“ Aziraphale’s voice is a thin, reedy thing, full of air and promises. “Of course,” he finishes, sounding tired. “You don’t have to mention it.”

“If you still want to— you know, I guess we’ll have to be careful about them. My eyes. Sunglasses all the time or… or…”

“Of course I want to.”

Crowley picks his head up and peers through his dripping hair to Aziraphale across from him, staring out still at his clothing on the floor.

“We’ll figure it out.”

Crowley nods, nosing at the water drops on his knee.

“Kay.”

One, two, three, four.

“Would you—“ Aziraphale starts and stops and looks at him, finally, blinking and his face looks lovely when it’s wet, Crowley thinks, refracting the light of a dimming afternoon. “Towels,” he manages. “Would you fetch us some?”

There is a flush that races across Aziraphale’s skin, something that brings them back in the present, into their modern reality of being soaking wet and totally naked.

“Yeah,” he says, and struggles to his feet. “Course.”

Crowley sways, aware all at once of how naked he is himself, of how his body is speaking a similar language to that of Aziraphale’s; with tells of his own that will give away more than he is willing to disclose right now. Full of shifting colors, betraying heartbeats, muscular twitches, testicles hellbent on becoming an internal organ.

“Towels,” Crowley says, and thinks that maybe he should cup a hand over himself. “Yeah.”

They’re outside, across the shower wall, four whole steps away.

One, two, three, four.

He hands one out to Aziraphale still on the floor and then rescinds it, offers out a palm instead.

Aziraphale stares at it for a moment, hair dripping, mouth parted, and then takes it, allows himself to be pulled up to his feet.

“Thank you.”

He takes the towel and takes to drying himself off, shy over the places that rarely see light, the angelic belly, the pink of his thighs. There is a spectacular desire to sink to his knees on the pile of clothes on the floor, press grateful kisses into that belly, those knees. Pay homage to the lavender stripes on his legs. Say thank you for carrying him and thank you for doing this, this slow salvation through film.

But he doesn’t, of course he doesn’t, relegated instead to standing mute and dripping, towel knotted so tightly around his waist he might lose sensation in his hips.

“I have— clothes, you know,” Crowley says, and immediately feels like an idiot. Aziraphale can manifest clothing, of course he can. Not that he ever does. It is only that Aziraphale is staring down at the pile between them, blinking, dismayed that he had left them in such a state or perhaps unsure of what to wear, sweat-soaked and filthy as they are. But assuming that Aziraphale will create them from raw firmament feels like an odd sort of slight, like being a bad host to an unusual but familiar house guest. He isn’t sure what the right move is. “If you want.”

“While I appreciate the offer,” Aziraphale begins, stooping to primly pick through his clothes, the towel wrapped up beneath his armpits, “I highly doubt I would fit in your trousers.”

He holds up his own trousers and Crowley can see that there is a spectacular amount of lubricant and sundry other fluid matter smeared down the front of them. Aziraphale rather quickly folds them in on themselves.

Crowley sucks at his teeth and does his best job of looking annoyed, trying not to think about it.

“A clean shirt then.”He tucks his elbows into his ribs and isn’t sure how to handle the silence between sentences, how to move it from one place into another. “Or the Monstro— the jumper. _Your_ jumper. From the other day.”

Aziraphale retrieves his underwear, shakes them out, and there is again the faint itch of yellow in the back of Crowley’s throat.

“Might I trouble you for that tee-shirt?”

“Of course, yeah. Let me just—“

Crowley leaves— is grateful to even— bending himself around the door and back into the bedroom, into his near empty closet. It’s black, the shirt, they all are. He realizes that he has not seen Aziraphale in black since Warlock’s 11th birthday party— that send off from their life of domesticity— and all at once it feels like there is a brick mortared into his throat.

“May I?”

Crowley jumps, again, at Aziraphale in his doorway.

The underwear is on— white cotton boxers in a style that Crowley is reasonably certain they stopped producing after World War II.

“Yeah, here—“

He watches the shirt get removed from his hands and pulled over Aziraphale’s head and it’s something surreal watching it happen, those fair damp curls popping through the neck like the world’s most bizarre magic trick. A rabbit coming out of a hat.

It’s snug. Much moreso than it is on Crowley, hugging across the strong chest and again across the belly. The seam of the shoulder, he realizes, hangs down lower on Aziraphale than it does on him.

“You’re a good deal more broad than I am, it seems,” Aziraphale says and tries to smile. It’s not a real one though, something locked away in the corners, not quite meeting his eyes.

“Yeah well,” Crowley throws a nervous hand up into his hair and pulls it back away from his eyes. “You’re a good deal stronger than me so.” He shrugs and tries to look normal. “It’s all for naught.”

He feels perpetually out of breath, perhaps from Aziraphale wearing his clothes and wearing black, barefoot in his bedroom. Or maybe it’s the reveal that he is far more human than he’d let on, a realization that feels forcibly real by admitting it to someone other than himself.

“Oh,” Aziraphale looks down at himself, at his stomach where it presses against the thin fabric of the tee. “I wouldn’t say that. You’re quite strong.”

“Used to be,” Crowley murmurs, and it crashes into him like a wave.

He wishes he had a shirt on, hell, a full suit. Something to wear like armor. He had left the sunglasses in the shower and his fingers itch to snap and make them appear on his face.

“Would you be able to?” Aziraphale asks without saying it, the elephant in the room, in a voice so small it is nearly hidden in his mouth. “Again? Tonight?”

Crowley looks up, blinks at him slowly.

“Maybe,” he forces himself to say, and grips the towel knotted at his hip a little harder, his heartbeat visible on his chest. “After some food and hopefully wine.”

Aziraphale’s face cracks open into earnest excitement, or perhaps just clear direction.

“Are you hungry? I can get takeaway again, from wherever you’d like this time. Or we can attempt to use that kitchen of yours although I can’t say if I’ll be any good at it. Perhaps we could try something simple. Breakfast for dinner. Pancakes.”

“You—“

It occurs to Crowley all at once that Aziraphale assumes he is going to stay, eat dinner, breakfast, _whatever_ — perhaps fuck again only maybe this time on his sofa. Something grips his chest, the ghost in the periphery again, and his brain blanks on the realization.

“You’ll stay?”

He hears himself ask it as if from another room, a sunken place where he exists outside of himself.

“Oh,” Aziraphale grips his own hands in front of himself, spins idly at the pinky ring. “Oh, of course, I did not mean to intrude. Of course you’ll want your privacy I can—“

“I don’t,” Crowley spits out, and there is a bead of water running down his naked chest, weaving through his ten whole chest hairs. Why the hell is he not wearing clothes. “I mean I do want privacy, you know. But not now. Not if— you know you can stay here however long. If you’d like. No pressure. It’s fine if you don’t. There’s really no—“

“—I’ll stay.”

Crowley does not know what to do with his arms again, especially without clothes on. There are no pockets to shuck them inside and no seams to yank on. His dominant left hand holds the knot of towel at his hip and scratches nervously at the fibers.

“Oh. Great. Cool.”

“So, we will do dinner, later. Unless you feel up to going out.”

The strange ache between his legs reminds him that he is not, in fact, up to going out and would like very much to do nothing more than sit on the world’s softest pillow for the next twenty-four hours.

“Pancakes sound nice, actually.”

His watch has been sitting on the bathroom sink and he realizes that he has no concept of what time it is.

“They do, don’t they?”

Aziraphale pats at his stomach, as if also realizing that he does not know what time it is and is reaching for a pocket watch that does not exist. It appears that outside of eating meals and fucking on camera, they are not certain of what to do around each other anymore.

“We should drink.”

Aziraphale looks up at him, a pale eyebrow lifting.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Alcohol,” Crowley clarifies, and is trying very hard not to look at the tableau on the bed behind Aziraphale: the aggressive, now half-empty bottle of lube, the wet spot on the sheets, the wrinkles where hands had very obviously been fisting in them. “I think we should consume large quantities of alcohol.”

Aziraphale’s gaze slides down to the corner, as if acknowledging that yes, there is quite an expressive and telling still life on the bed behind him. One that they are most certainly not going to talk about. They are very good at not talking. Excellent even. Six-thousand years of turning the other cheek has, it seems, made for a convenient and most-likely unhealthy bed-fellow.

“Wine?”

“I have some bottles,” Crowley says, and fishes around for another shirt. He triple checks the knot on the towel at his hip, as if Aziraphale hasn’t seen up close and personal what’s under it (it’s been, Crowley reminds himself, in the angel’s bloody _mouth_ ), and then pulls the shirt over his head.

They match, oddly, the misfit set of an antithetic pair. Crowley tries not to think about how Aziraphale is wearing only underwear and a tee-shirt, his propriety forgotten somewhere on the floor of the bathroom.

He figures it would be rude to wear more clothing than his guest, so he steps into underwear of his own and shucks his towel somewhere on the floor.

“Nothing like what you have at the bookshop. Don’t get your hopes up.”

Aziraphale is picking up his towel and hanging it on a hook behind his door, sucking audibly at his teeth.

“I’ve always said you could take a few cases home.”

“They’re _yours_.”

“Half of them are purchases from _you,_ however.”

“They were _gifts_.”

Their bare feet leave damp outlines on the floor, a wet trail towards the kitchen.

“Red or white? Although I warn you the white isn’t chilled.”

“Red. If you please.”

Outside of the bedroom the air feels breathable again, or at least like he isn’t about to drown.

Or maybe he is, he thinks, because Aziraphale is stepping up behind him and reaching for the cabinet where the wine glasses are. Reminding him again of how the angel knows where things exist in his flat, of where the spoons sleep in the drawer, where he keeps the towels and the wine and the plasters for his feet.

Crowley glances over to him, the dark tee-shirt bisecting his arm into shapes he’s never seen before— a pink elbow, gold-dust hairs, strong wrists, biceps that are pale and thick. Black shirt and white curls drying into tight clouds and he is again yanked backwards through time to that 11th birthday party, that nebulous domestic fantasy.

He looks back down to the wine bottle on the counter, endeavors to focus on opening it. Do not think about how those pale biceps had held him so tightly. _Don’t_. 

One, two, three, four.

He peels back the foil and corkscrews down, aware now, acutely, of what Aziraphale smells like after a shower, of how that base note of vanilla and old books could evidently not be scrubbed away.

The glasses get placed on the counter next to him, the foil on the counter swept into a broad palm and deposited in the bin. Heat floods the spaces between electrons, under Crowley’s skin, everywhere.

“Cheers,” Aziraphale says, when the wine has been poured and they are leaning back against the counter. He does not quite meet Crowley’s eyes.

Their glasses kiss and Crowley wishes he were wearing some.

“Oh,” he says, and heads for the fridge. “Wait. Here— something to nibble on. I have cheese.” _And regret_.

When he turns back around, cheese and grapes in hand, he finds Aziraphale with an eyebrow raised.

“I thought dairy was a trouble.”

“Yeah,” Crowley says, and finds a cutting board, some savory biscuits that he hopes pairs well with this random Californian wine and possibly regretful cheese. “Not for me, though, is it?”

It feels like old times, somehow, with the maybe too-transparent flirting and Aziraphale ignoring it. He does a terrible job arranging the plate and thinks that maybe he shouldn’t flirt. Maybe that makes things wildly uncomfortable for an Aziraphale that is already wildly uncomfortable. Maybe he’s an idiot. Oh Satan. Oh fuck.

One, two, three, four.

“That looks lovely.”

“It looks hideous but hopefully you’ll eat enough of it that I stop caring.”

He had somehow forgotten how decadent Aziraphale could make anything seem. Even in an ill-fitting tee-shirt and only underwear his wrists are beautiful, his movements are beautiful. He moans around the cheese like he hasn’t eaten in weeks.

“Oh, this is scrumptious.”

“Good,” Crowley murmurs into his wine glass and tries not to look at him. It won’t do to lean across restaurant tables and watch the angel eat. Not anymore. Not now that he knows what the inside of Aziraphale’s thighs look like and what his skin tastes like and how he isn’t supposed to talk about such things. He isn’t supposed to acknowledge them. He would like very much to lie down somewhere. Stare at a wall.

“You know,” Aziraphale says, seemingly unaware of this internal crisis, “they make something— medicine, I suppose, for humans to eat dairy. I’ve seen it on occasion. I could— I mean, if you ever wanted to try it—”

 _For humans_. The brick is back in his throat. He swallows and forces down more wine.

“Nah,” he manages, after. “Not much for eating, me.”

Aziraphale sighs and eats his cheese, his grapes, munches quietly and looks around the room.

He wants to sit down, sprawl out on the sofa, maybe his bed. Or maybe _not_ his bed, he thinks, remembering that there is a somewhat traumatic looking scene waiting for him in there, full of drying wet spots and a crusty memory they aren’t going to talk about. Aziraphale’s thumb in his mouth and dick in his—

“Well,” Aziraphale bites out, rather loudly, and seems shocked at his own boldness. “You should be,” he finishes, a good deal more quietly.

Crowley closes his eyes, hates that he isn’t wearing glasses. There is a frustrating amount of wetness in his underwear, a slow bodily exit slide of all that lubricant and something else he isn’t supposed to acknowledge.

“Hm?” Crowley opens his eyes and tries to remember what they had been talking about.

“It’s just— there’s _minerals_. And, and… _vitamins_.” Aziraphale looks oddly panicked. “I’m only saying that it would behoove you to take up a healthy interest in eating. Now th— you know. I’m just— I’m a bit—“

Something gets bitten off at the end of his sentence and Crowley blinks at him, trying to listen while welcoming the first brush of an alcoholic buzz.

“I eat.”

Aziraphale sucks his teeth.

“ _Enough_ , though,” he says, and then looks down at his hands, folding across his lap. “Eat enough.”

On some shelved level of consciousness Crowley is certain that this is an emotionally significant conversation. But he cannot seem to focus on much else besides the wildly grotesque and seemingly glacial exit of fluid from muscles that have been manually forced to relax twice in twelve hours. The wine, too, is burning a hole through his focus.

“M’still a snake.”

The room feels warm and pleasant after alcohol on a empty stomach, like a blow torch has just sizzled away a number of frustrating and repetitive anxieties. A dulling of superfluous nerve endings. The world functioning as if underwater.

“We don’t eat much, snakes. Slow… metrabs— metra-- metra _bolism_.”

“ _Metabolism_ ,” Aziraphale corrects on some kind of automatic whim. He is blinking owlishly down at his wine.

“Exactly.”

“I don’t believe it works like that.”

Crowley hums his discontent.

In the distance, through the haze of alcohol, he notes a strange ache in his body, soreness lying down in his muscles. The thighs are tired, he notes, the ribs feel bruised. The spaces between his joints feel gelatinous and shaky, given to wobbling under the slightest provocation.

Like Aziraphale’s bare foot, sliding out so close to his on the floor.

“Are your blisters feeling better?”

Crowley looks down at his feet, at Aziraphale’s next to them. He’s so bloody _pink_ , everywhere, like some kind of delightful rosewater confection, dusted with blond.

“Yeah,” he says. “Not too bad.”

“That’s good,” Aziraphale says to his wine.

He has a deeply unpleasant tightening in his stomach, a kind of cramp almost. From the sudden wine or the jostling of his insides, or perhaps the sudden assault of so much honesty.

“So,” Aziraphale starts, and their toes are nearly touching. He has the frightening impulse to kick at his toes, like some kind of school-yard flirtation. Don’t flirt, he reminds himself. _Don’t_.

“Green, then,” Aziraphale finishes quietly.

“Green,” Crowley sighs. “Half surprised they aren’t red, to be honest.”

“Can you still see?” Aziraphale waves a hand around. “In the dark?”

“Not very well.”

“Ah.” 

Aziraphale looks tired, a natural acceleration of the effect of the wine, maybe. He always did get rather sleepy and slurry after a glass or two, always blinking so much and smiling so big. Expressiveness dialed up to a ten. Charming and pleasant and irritating and _cute_ , Crowley thinks, entirely too fucking cute.

The brick in his throat feels like it has leapt out and smacked him in the forehead. Crowley wants to kiss him. _Kiss him_. Push him back into the cabinets and suck the wine off his lips, experience his regretful cheese block secondhand. Tell him, _if this is the only way I can have it I’ll count myself the luckiest_.

His head swims, it’s frighteningly hard to breathe.

“Have you ever cooked before?”

“Not properly.”

“I’ve tried it a few times,” Aziraphale says, and his hair is more tightly curled after it has been freshly washed, Crowley notices, full of outrageously cherubic ringlets. He wants to run his fingers through them, maybe while kissing him. “Can’t say I was very _good_ at it. But it was edible.”

“Better than anything I could do,” he forces himself to say, if only to prevent himself from leaning over and sucking his mouth into Aziraphale’s increasingly pink cheek. He makes himself look away, look down at the floor.

Perhaps wine had been a bad idea.

“I wonder if—“

Crowley glances over at the bitten off sentence.

“If?” He prods.

“Nothing.”

It’s as familiar a dance as any— Aziraphale stepping back, Crowley following. The wine soothing the burn of awkwardness until they settle down into their familiar selves. A balm for friends that were meant to be enemies.

“Go on.” He kicks at Aziraphale’s foot with his own and then experiences a rush of unmitigated giddy energy at his impromptu schoolyard flirt. His insides feel wet.

But Aziraphale holds fast, drinking every time it looks like he is about to speak.

So Crowley puts his glass down with more force than necessary, pours himself more wine. He holds the bottle up in a silent question and Aziraphale offers his glass in answer.

The counter is uncomfortable. It bites into his lower back. The floor is hard and cold and he isn’t sure why they are still standing here when they could be on the sofa— a place that has yet to be defiled.

“I wonder if we might take this to the sofa.”

Crowley eyes him flatly.

“How’d you know?”

Aziraphale is doing that thing where he won’t look at him.

“You look a bit uncomfortable. And you just— I thought perhaps the sofa—“

“That isn’t what you were going to say,” he accuses. “Before.”

“Might we though?” Aziraphale asks, in that voice that Crowley has never been very good at denying.

“Sure. Sofa.”

He brings the bottle, their glasses. Aziraphale carries the cheese like it is a holy object.

“It looks better now that you’ve eaten most of it,” he comments, and snags an errant grape.

“I confess I did not do it for the aesthetic.”

Crowley has the striking urge to say something ridiculous. Something like, _no but everything you touch is beautiful_. He drinks more wine instead.

“Are you comfortable? Do you need anything? You should really have some water after this.”

Crowley peers at him over his wineglass, accusatory.

“I’m fine,” he says, and can feel his eyebrows pulling together in question.

“I can fetch whatever you might need. If… if you need anything, that is. At a pharmacy. I’m not sure if you have— if you needed any sort of— well, you know, anything really.”

He can feel his ears heat, on account of the wine or the fact that Aziraphale is worried about his sore backside in completely oblique terms, he isn’t sure. Some sort of self-defense mechanism gets tripped, the one that without the influence of alcohol is usually named, _being a dick_.

“Looking like that? They’d have you arrested for indecency,” he says, and tops off his glass. He has already decided that there is a lovely bottle of scotch in his cabinet that will make an excellent follow-up to this questionable wine and regrettable cheese. “You haven’t shown that much leg since—“

He chokes on his own voice and the self-defense mechanism crashes head-on into a wall labeled _you’re a monster_.

Since a few days ago on the bookshop floor. There’s a camera holding film in the other room that proves it. Has the negatives, all the proofs.

His mouth opens and then closes, opens again like he is searching for how to finish his dumb statement but nothing happens. The alcohol that sizzled off all those nerve-endings has also, apparently, sizzled off all of his higher brain function.

“Greece, perhaps,” Aziraphale sighs, none the wiser for Crowley’s internal struggle. “A long time ago. The chitons were quite fetching, I thought.”

“They were,” he forces himself to say, and is grateful for Aziraphale always saving him, somehow.

“I am thinking that perhaps we ought to—“

Aziraphale bites off his sentence, staring at his new phone down on the table and fiddling with that ring again.

“Ought to what?”

“B roll,” he finishes, and does not look over. “I believe they call it. Maybe film more build up. Something to take up time so that— that there’s less…”

Less fucking. Less kissing. Of course. _Of course_.

A weight seems to settle on all of Crowley’s internal organs, pulling them down into his hips.

“Yeah,” he murmurs into his glass. “That makes sense.”

“I am thinking that we could film the set up, moving furniture into place, just us… talking, perhaps.”

“ _Talking_.”

“Yes.”

“It’s… I told them I fucked an angel. Tempted you. Wiled you with my many charms and lured you into a life of sin. Lots of _amazing he hasn’t fallen yet_ , statements were bandied about.”

He scrubs a hand over his face at the admission.

“I can— I can attempt to… to lean into that more,” Aziraphale says, and Crowley notices that there is a fine layer of perspiration along his forehead, the lines at the corner of his eyes look deep. “You know, really act it out.”

Crowley squeezes his hand tight, nails digging into his palm.

“You’re doing—“

His throat closes up, the brick is back in place.

“You’re fine,” he manages. “It’s me.”

“It _isn’t_ ,” Aziraphale says quickly, quietly. “You— you’re doing wonderfully.”

The praise seems to sizzle at Crowley’s edges. He doesn’t know what to do with such a thing in a non-sexual context. It feels stiff and uncomfortable, like a gift he doesn’t know where to hang in his home so he just keeps it in the box, unopened.

“I’m _not_ ,” he bites out, because denying it feels easier than accepting it.

“You are,” Aziraphale persists, clearly unaware of how this box he is presenting him with feels like an atom bomb, ready to explode his insides. “This isn’t— this hasn’t been—“

“Yeah,” Crowley interrupts, because he doesn’t want to know where that statement had been headed. Towards _this hasn’t been easy_ or, _this isn’t ideal_. He already knows those things. He does not need to hear them from the one person whose opinion matters most.

“Just— need to hurry this along, I think,” Crowley says, to redirect the conversation.

Aziraphale looks pale, staring unblinking at his phone.

“Yes,” he agrees quietly. “We do.”

There’s more wine, a few more grapes, another cube of cheese, a strained silence.

“So tomorrow,” Aziraphale starts, and swallows visibly. “I was thinking that perhaps we could tackle that scene you mentioned— the one, you know, in the Bentley.”

All Crowley can think about is parking.

“Sure,” he says slowly. “Or maybe— what else is on the list?”

“We could make an attempt at— erm, tying each other up, if you would be amenable to that. It will certainly eat up a good amount of time. You know, the… tying.”

The blood in Crowley’s face flushes hot and then leaves entirely, pooling in his stomach. Bondage. He had thought about it this morning, _once,_ and then had quickly shelved it, not willing to unpack why the idea felt like his atoms being rearranged.

“Okay,” he says and it’s entirely too squeaky, so he tries again: “yes, okay. Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow.”

They both drink.

“Maybe tonight I could—“ He had almost said _thank you_ , a phrase that he blames entirely on the nearly three glasses of wine and empty stomach. “—give you, uh.” The technical and not emotionally significant words are evading him, suppressed by wine or maybe exhaustion. “You know. Mouth sex.”

Aziraphale looks over him, startled. His lips part and then close and then he primly clears his throat.

“If you would… _like_ to perform oral sex on me I will, erm, of course be— be receptive to it.”

Receptive. Right.

“Sure.”

He feels a bit like he is being handled by tongs, from far away, gloved up and distant. There is more wetness in his underwear. He is suddenly aware of how long his nails are, how he needs to shave again. How at some point they will need to trim his hair. He blinks and breathes and would like very much to lie down. Stare at that wall.

“Are you quite alright?”

Crowley looks over at him, surprised.

“Yes. Of course. Why wouldn’t I be. Tickety boo and all that.”

Aziraphale closes his mouth, looking distinctly itchy at the dig.

“It’s fine if you are not, Crowley, really I am—“

“I _am_ ,” he snaps. “I’m _fine_.”

He can see Aziraphale flex his jaw and stare forward, his hands squeezing into tight fists. They relax, slowly, eventually.

“Sorry,” he breathes out, feeling hot and sensitive and wrung entirely out.

“You do not have to apologize I— I understand.”

 _You don’t,_ he wants to say, _you couldn’t possibly_.

“And my offer still stands— if you need anything. Anything at all. You can talk to me about it.”

He bristles. He does not know why he bristles. Maybe on account of alcohol reframing his emotions or maybe on account of this dismantling of the past six-thousand years. All those flash clothes, the flash sunglasses, the cool car and the up-to-date slang. The attitude he had carefully cultivated that he had always hoped walked the line of both effortlessly stylish and wildly unconcerned. He had put a not-insignificant amount of time and thought into this highly cultivated lifestyle, a brand even, that he really only cared about one person noticing.

 _Please think I am enough_.

“I don’t,” he says, because here is Aziraphale wearing Crowley’s own black clothes and sitting on his expensive sofa and seeing right down to the mess of him. He can see the pink blisters on his skin and the hair that needs to be cut and the jaw that needs to be shaved. He is aware of the sore muscles and the nails that are too long and the green eyes and probably even of how Crowley has become a slowly leaking squeeze tube of angelic jizz. Known on a cellular and deeply uncomfortable level.

“Well,” Aziraphale says softly, so softly and so sadly that it makes Crowley’s teeth hurt. “The offer stands. If you change your mind.”

The kid gloves are back on and the angel is buttoned-up and Crowley feels like he has taken six-thousand years of baby steps forward and a four-thousand year leap back.

He drinks. A lot.

“Oh, my dear that’s a bit—“

He shoots Aziraphale a sharp look and he stops talking, another blow that dismantles him. Aziraphale never would have shut up before, not like this, not from a _look_. Aziraphale would have bitched at him until he complied and retaliated back in a suitably childish manner that clearly left no room for argument. Aziraphale would have brought it up again for many days and maybe even decades later, pointing out how evil always sowed the seeds of its own demise. Aziraphale wouldn’t bite his tongue to _Crowley_ over something like a sharp glance and an annoyed expression.

And all at once the focus of that ire that has been boiling inside of him shifts into a hazy focus: Aziraphale is treating him differently because Aziraphale thinks he’s dying.

Which he is, in a sense. Or at least, he has developed a sort of nebulous expiration date. A promise for things to go wrong.

And perhaps that’s why things have felt so awkward between them, despite the sex and the profoundly new brand of intimacy, a thing that surely should have wedged them together instead of apart. It’s because Aziraphale has changed and Crowley, despite losing his immortality, has not.

“Christ, angel,” he mutters.

“What is it?”

He glances over at him, sees how Aziraphale looks him in the face and looks him in the eye, unafraid and nonplussed. And he considers at least that some things apparently never change: Aziraphale unfazed yet again by a constantly shifting Crowley— male, female, neither, both— always with the different clothes and the different hair, the now different eyes. Something melts and then rises up through the thaw. _You could not ever disappoint me._

There’s mortar in his throat again, an entire brick wall. He cannot breathe. He panics.

“Nothing. I just— bathroom,” he says. “Be right back.”

He makes it down the long hallway, somehow, moving on account of some entirely human flight or fight response. He finds himself inside the bathroom door, pressed up into it, blinking into that silver light that still streams in through the window.

His watch is on the sink, water droplets on its face. And then it’s on his wrist, a comforting and familiar weight. He stares at it for probably too long.

One, two, three, four.

It is half-past five, he realizes, and tries to come down. The wall in his throat gets swallowed, water gets splashed on his face.

They could make dinner, he thinks, drink more wine, go to sleep. Maybe Aziraphale would spend the night— a thought that feels errant and at odds with his own warring emotional state of _curl up alone and die_ and, _never leave the angel’s sight_.

More water is splashed, more breaths are breathed.

Aziraphale’s trousers are hanging over the wall of the shower, drying, apparently having been washed in the sink at some point. His shirt and waistcoat are folded on the single chair— _dry clean_ _only_ , he thinks, and there is on top of them the ridiculous bow tie.

It feels silky in his fingers, and as his heart rate slows he realizes how few times he has ever actually touched the thing.

He cleans himself up, eventually, and tries not to make any more upsetting bodily noises that will be amplified by his all together too sparse bathroom. He considers investing in a carpet, wall art, more towels— something to absorb sound if Aziraphale is going to be spending any decent amount of time here. He wonders if the sound waves are audible down the long hallway.

Aziraphale is in the kitchen when he returns, standing with his impeccable posture and a frying pan. He knows where Crowley keeps the cookware.

His toes feel numb.

“Pancakes,” Aziraphale says, because that somehow explains everything.

“Sounds good.”

There’s a recipe searched for on Aziraphale’s new phone, their fingerprints marrying on the screen.

“ _Recipes_ ,” Aziraphale says, somewhat breathlessly. “On the Ebay.”

“Not the Ebay,” Crowley breathes, fondness lodged between every atom. “Just the internet. The whole _world_ is on here, angel. You’d be amazed.”

“Geoduck99 might have made these.”

“They might have,” Crowley agrees.

There’s a bowl, a fork that Aziraphale fishes out of the drawer, a comfort that lies down in Crowley’s bones. There’s flour and eggs and milk of the non-dairy variety, a thing that prompts a string of slightly slurred and drunken questions.

“Do you suppose almonds have tiny nipples?” Crowley asks.

Aziraphale smiles and it’s a real one this time, coaxed out by three glasses of wine and not enough cheese to anchor it.

“I wonder if they’re sensitive,” he muses, and the brick in Crowley’s throat slaps him across the face again.

Push him up against the cabinets— the desire burns bright across his skin, all of it. Bite a kiss into the back of his neck. _Tell him that you’ve wanted him every day since the first day._ Sink into the wealth of his thighs.

His hands shake. He cracks an egg instead. He tries not to think about pressing all of his front to all of Aziraphale’s back, breathing in that smell of old books and many lifetimes of shared memories.

He folds the flour.

He counts his revolutions around the bowl.

One, two, three, four.

The pancakes are edible, at least, even if they aren’t great. But dress anything in enough confectioner’s sugar and bright lemon juice, enough miracle-in-the-city strawberries and maybe a bit of syrup (on the side, out of Aziraphale’s line of sight) and anything becomes delicious.

Besides, he thinks, watching Aziraphale marvel wide-eyed for what might be the hundredth time that, _we made these, look, Crowley, we did it—_ it will be the memory that sustains him.

If he tastes yellow and sunshine on the back of his throat at some point, folding a bite into his mouth, he will tell himself that it’s the lemon juice, the green hat of a strawberry that had been left behind. It is not the effect of a highly intoxicated angel, pushing water across the counter toward him.

“Drink,” he says, and Crowley gets up to retrieve the scotch.

“I will,” he promises.

It’s peaty and smoky and a terrible partner to the sweetness of their breakfast, dinner, _whatever_. He drinks it anyway and chases the buzz of an hour ago.

“What did you mean?” Aziraphale asks, after. After the dishes are drying by the sink and they are sprawled out along the sofa. There is some movie playing but Crowley can’t quite remember how it got there. His brain feels like it has been stuffed with cotton, his foot is very much asleep.

“Hmm?” His head lolls backward and over to Aziraphale, seated in an increasingly slouching sprawl. His posture is going, Crowley notes, and smiles at how delightfully drunk they are.

“What did you mean?” He asks again, his eyes wide and wet and deep enough that Crowley feels like he might tumble headlong into them, drown there. “When you— what you said. In the shower. That I’m just… being nice.”

Crowley closes the mouth he hadn’t realized had been hanging open and swallows.

“Just— before,” he says, and attempts to sit up. “I feel like… like you would’ve said some bullshit about evil sowing the seeds of its own ruin. A real founder on the rocks of antiquity—“

“—Iniquity.”

“ _Iniquity_ moment. And now— I don’t know. It feels—“

He chews on the inside of his cheek, looking at that hammer beat of Aziraphale’s pulse in the well of his neck. _Fireworks_ , he thinks again, realizing that his own pulse is hammering right along with Aziraphale’s. It feels like a wrecking ball that he is too intoxicated to move out of the way from.

“It feels like— like you’re treating me differently. Kid gloves. Like m’gonna break.”

Aziraphale looks as though he is about to say _aren’t you though_? But apparently, _thankfully_ , doesn’t.

“Are you… telling me you _want_ me to be mean?”

“Not mean.”

Aziraphale is leaning toward him, taking in his face, maybe noticing that he needs to shave if the way he is staring at his mouth is any indication.

“N— not mean,” he repeats, and finds he is staring at Aziraphale’s mouth too, the dreamy pink of his flushed cheeks. “Just. You know, a bastard.”

“A bastard.”

“Yeah,” Crowley breathes, and it occurs to him that they are really rather close. He can feel Aziraphale’s breath spanning the distance between them. “You know. A bastard. The thing I—“

His throat abruptly closes. He chokes. Tears well up in his eyes as he struggles around the unspeakable truth. _The thing I fell in love with_. He won’t say it. The room spins and he feels, all at once, as though he has had far, far too much to drink.

“I might get sick.”

He finds his legs, the foot still asleep, and stumbles half blind towards the bathroom, down the hallway.

Six thousand years of carefully not saying it and he gets drunk and had almost— he’d almost—

He makes it, barely, to the toilet. Knees impacting the cold tile floor and he’s glad he had scrubbed the thing so recently or else it wouldn’t just be surplus alcohol that would be causing him to vomit.

“Oh, my dear.”

There are hands on his forehead, his neck, gathering up loose hair and pulling it back. He hadn’t even heard Aziraphale come in.

“M’fine.”

“You most certainly are not.”

Aziraphale, had apparently sobered up. _Entirely_.

“Sorry,” he says, and sits back on the cold tile floor. “It’s not a big deal. Just too much— you know.”

He keeps his eyes closed and can feel a damp towel along his face, his cheeks, his chin. He grabs it and does not open his eyes.

“Thanks.”

The warm press of a solid body wedges up against him and he opens his eyes, finds Aziraphale next to him.

“You know, I don’t believe you are very responsible when scotch is involved.”

Crowley lets his head tilt back into the glass shower wall. They’re outside it this time, and things feel better if not entirely known.

“I thought you’d keep me out of trouble.”

There is a fine quiver to Aziraphale’s chin, something he may not have noticed were he not so close.

“Oh.”

Aziraphale stares down at his hands, splayed out on the furred expanse of his thighs. His skin underneath the white hair is pink and pale and Crowley thinks that it would probably feel fantastic to rest his head on.

“I— I didn’t. I apologize I should have—“

“Hm?”

The glass feels good against his skull, cold and smooth, a bright point of contact to focus on. He has a rather spectacular headache.

“I should’ve done a better job,” Aziraphale says.

“With what?”

There is only the hum of the toilet tank refilling, the distant echoes of life in adjacent flats.

“Keeping you out of trouble.”

It occurs, through the headache, that they have been having two very different conversations.

“You have,” he says quickly. “Of course you have.”

“You should have some water,” Aziraphale says, not acknowledging him. “Brush your teeth. I can— I’ll clean up your bed.”

Aziraphale leaves before he can protest, disappearing into the darkness of his flat.

He’ll fetch him water, knowing where the cups live in the cabinets. He’ll clean up the bed, knowing where everything goes. He is wearing black and wearing his clothes. He is in his flat and had held his hair back and had been— he’d been—

 _Kind_.

Crowley’s legs are sprawled out on the floor in front of him, ungainly, too skinny. His own exterior feels highly electric, aware completely of his skin and his nails and his skeleton underneath, propping it all up. Aziraphale had been kind to him.

He blinks. Of course he had been. He’s an angel. That’s what he does. He cannot help it. It does not, Crowley reminds himself, have _anything_ to do with him.

It doesn’t. 

“Do you need help?”

Crowley looks up to Aziraphale with a water glass in one hand and the other outstretched. He looks at the palm, slowly takes it.

“Yeah,” he breathes, and it feels, finally, okay to say it. “I think I do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "room tone" is when you record the sound of the environment with no dialogue. 
> 
> oh hey, we are gettin' somewhere.


	14. outtake #1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a very small update just to help... get back into the swing of things. many, many thanks to everyone being so very patient, and so very kind.

“You could stay,” he says, and isn’t sure what this new feeling is— surplus alcohol recently expelled from a human stomach or maybe just butterflies. But butterflies of a highly specialized origin. Ones that are curious to ascertain the exact dimensions of Aziraphale’s kindness and what, precisely, it feels like when swallowed. “I— I have a toothbrush.”

Aziraphale looks at him and is apparently uncertain what such an item has to do with him, personally.

“For you,” Crowley clarifies, and can feel his heartbeat in his throat.

“Oh.”

“You know— if you wanted to stay. It’s late. Could be dangerous.”

As if a principality would ever have to worry about such things. He wants to chew his own tongue off.

“You have a toothbrush,” Aziraphale repeats. “For me?”

“Yeah,” he breathes, and nearly trips over himself to find it, tucked away in the medicine cabinet. It’s there, sitting alone in its emotionally inconvenient packaging, blue and brand new and oddly terrifying. Alone without its mate. His hands shake, but he manages to unwrap it.

“For you,” he says.

“You don’t mind? If I stay?”

Crowley’s heart is throwing itself at the cage of his ribs, desperate to get out. A wild thing. His stomach folds itself into origami shapes. A bird. A crane. Something winged and sharp.

“Course not.”

Aziraphale takes the toothbrush out of his hands and Crowley wonders when the thing had become so heavy.

“Okay.”

 _Okay, okay, okay_. _He said okay_.

“Okay.”

So Crowley dispenses the toothpaste between them, twin blue dew drops. They stand hip to hip in front of the mirror in their matching black tee-shirts and underpants, brushing at their teeth in silence, looking at each other from the shy corners of their eyes.

It is the longest and perhaps _least_ professional job Crowley has ever done brushing his teeth. It’s hard to get enough air around the foam and around his heart, stuck as it is in his throat. They take turns spitting in the sink, an act that should be gross in theory but he finds wildly charming in practice. Aziraphale, angel of the eastern gate and also propriety— _spitting_.

“What?” Aziraphale mouths, around the toothbrush and around an entreating blush spreading across his face.

Crowley spits, for the final time, in the sink.

“Just— never thought I’d see you _spitting_.”

The flush on Aziraphale’s cheeks deepens but he looks inordinately pleased about it, bending primly to the sink one last time.

“You have a point,” he says, and wipes delicately at the corner of his mouth. “I usually swallow.”

Crowley coughs out a surprised laugh and tries to cover it up with the shelving of his toothbrush, dropping it noisily into the cup next to the hand soap.

“May I?” Aziraphale asks, and is looking to Crowley for permission to do the same.

“Sure, yeah.”

The handles knock together, they criss-cross at the base. The desire to swivel them around into a spooning position tempts at his fingertips. He suppresses it, wiping down the porcelain, the spare toothpaste, the speckles on the mirror. It all shines, cold and chrome.

“You’re very tidy.”

Crowley blinks and thinks about earlier, about dropping his towel on the floor, about Aziraphale picking it up.

“I guess.”

“It’s nice.”

The butterflies are back. Or maybe it’s that bird. The origami crane. Poking holes into his organs, letting the light in. 

“Thanks.” He scratches at his neck. “You can take the bed. Tonight. If you want. I don’t mind sleeping on sofas.”

It occurs to him that they are having a… a sleepover. At his flat. A thing they have not done since— since—

Something curls up in the corner of Aziraphale’s mouth, the smallest smile. A momentary distraction.

“I know,” he says softly. “But you take the bed. I wouldn’t dream of putting you out. And I’m… still not much for sleeping, you know.”

“Oh,” Crowley says, feeling incredibly stupid. “Of course. Yeah. Right.”

He flips the light off as they leave, matching strides down the hallway.

“At least take a pillow. A blanket.”

He wants to tell him to take the bed, really, share it with him, maybe then he’d get some sleep. And after all they _had_ shared it this morning in a significantly more intimate way.

Aziraphale mulls it over for entirely too long.

“Okay,” he says, finally.

 _Okay, okay, okay. He said okay_.

He gives him the spare pillow and the spare blanket— one that hadn’t had the wet spot or any other crusty moments in need of laundering, memories of something they won’t talk about. That one is his, his own, and he never wants Aziraphale to look at it again.

“If you need anything,” Crowley says, and isn’t sure what the hell he could ever have to offer Aziraphale at this point (or at any point), “I’ll keep the door open and… and you can always text me.”

Aziraphale smiles again as if that isn’t the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard.

“Text you— right. Do close the door though? I don’t want the light to keep you up.”

“Okay.”

 _Okay, okay, okay_.

 _One, two, three, four._

Aziraphale pads off down the hallway, blanket and pillow in hand. He stops near the kitchen and turns around.

“Goodnight, Crowley.”

Crowley’s feet feel glued to the floor, his voice has gotten lost somewhere on the way to his throat.

He finds it between the butterflies, the winged thing, somewhere at the bottom.

“Goodnight, angel.”

Later, in bed and not sleeping, Crowley stares at the ceiling. There are long shadows there, shifting, as restless as he is.

The last time they had done this they had stayed up together— two immortals ruminating about death— and had ordered greasy take-away food, had eaten it on the sofa. They had talked then about logistics of a different bodily sort and had hoped to survive, the both of them, together.

He considers that now isn’t so different: substitute pancakes for pizza but the existential dread is the same.

He rolls over and closes his eyes, tries to sleep. But he cannot turn off the film reel playing in his head, the endless loop of imagined Aziraphale scenarios: the angel on his sofa, in his kitchen, watching the telly, reading his books, eating his cheese.

He throws the blankets off of himself in a fit of frustration and decides he’ll take a walk, a _peek_ — an errand for water. He eyes the full glass on his bedside table and then drinks it all in one extended gulp.

He opens his door, quietly, softly, and from down the long and dark hallway can hear the quiet murmuring of Aziraphale’s voice in the kitchen. Crowley follows it.

“I want you to know that— that I’m _watching_ you. And no _funny_ business anymore. You… you churlish thing.”

There is no itch of yellow in his throat, no taste like sunshine. Aziraphale is clearly putting the fear of God into something in his kitchen and it takes a very audible _smack_ of skin on _something_ for Crowley to realize—

“Beating up my espresso machine, are you?”

Aziraphale gasps and steps back from the appliance, where it had been pulled forward to the near edge of the counter.

“You said no blessings.”

He feels like he is barreling toward a cliff again, inertia impacting all of his suddenly mortal organs.

“It’s a bad habit, you know,” Crowley says, and realizes that he’s smiling, hugely, and this feeling his chest is so big it hurts. He considers that he might vomit again. “The yelling.”

Aziraphale eyes the espresso machine and sticks out his chin, sucks at his teeth.

“I had half a mind of smiting it.”

Crowley cocks a hip against the wall, leans the side of his head into it. He would like his heart to slide on over and disappear into the plaster, behind the lathe.

“Don’t think that would help much.”

Aziraphale’s shoulders shift in his borrowed tee-shirt, within the extra room that he does not fill out.

“Of course not,” he says, “but I imagine it would feel rather satisfying.”

Crowley has nothing to say, absolutely nothing, but he is desperate for something to suspend the moment, something to extend the minute. He is still leaning and still smiling and there are still butterflies around the organs, _in them_ , over Aziraphale in his kitchen at midnight, taking out his frustrations on inanimate objects.

“It would,” he settles on, softly enough that maybe Aziraphale won’t hear it. Won’t hear him wishing he could smite other things into submission. Demons and humanity and digestive tracts.

The dreamy dark of his flat is mooring itself around Aziraphale, swampy thick shadows gulping up the edges of his shirt until only his skin glows visible against the black. It occurs to Crowley that he is finally, perhaps, witnessing the dark as Aziraphale sees it, has always seen it. And instead of fear, finally, at his loss of demonic power he feels at once a great swelling of empathy. A connection to Aziraphale’s occasionally frustrating worldview that so often eluded him.

“Why are you awake?” Aziraphale asks, and even in the dark there is an astounding amount of catchlight on his eyes, golden reflections of the city outside, the lamp in the other room. “You should be resting.”

“Water,” he says, on cue, and holds up his glass.

“Oh, good, yes. Hydrate.”

Aziraphale takes it from him and fills it.

The very tips of their fingers kiss as he hands it back.

Crowley looks down at the glass, at the water inside of it, staring down through the electric refractions of light caught there.

“Couldn’t sleep,” he mumbles.

“Do you need food? Medicine? I can still go out if you need and I’m _sure_ the apothecary would manage to find itself open if—“

“No,” he interrupts, and he should really stop this stupid besotted smiling. “I’m fine.”

“Perhaps— you desire company?”

Aziraphale is fidgeting at his own fingers, toying with the pinky ring, the expertly manicured cuticles.

“Yeah,” Crowley breathes, and he wishes he weren’t barefoot. It seems to him that his feet are giving away every emotion he has ever felt. Despair in the arch, loneliness in the curl of his toes. “That could be nice.”

“Sofa?”

“Sure.”

And that’s how they end up on the sofa, with Crowley’s legs locked over an armrest and staring at the television, set on nearly mute, a black and white horror film playing out while Aziraphale reads.

“Your legs are going to fall asleep,” Aziraphale says mindlessly, turning the page. “Crooked like that.”

“Nah.”

They are. He can feel his toes beginning to tingle.

On the screen an old knight plays a game of chess with Death. He’s seen this film, once, long ago, when it first came out.

“You can turn up the volume,” Aziraphale says. “I don’t mind.”

“Don’t wanna distract you.”

“Subtitles then. I doubt you can hear it.”

Crowley tilts his head back to stare incredulously upside down at Aziraphale.

“Sounds like you’re trying to get me to read, angel.”

“Oh tosh.” Aziraphale sucks his teeth and smiles, shyly. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

His heart pounds. He can’t stop smiling. He counts the beats, the seconds.

One, two, three, four.

“You should really try to sleep,” Aziraphale murmurs, so softly Crowley can barely hear it.

“Can’t,” he says, feeling a bit more like his old self than he has in ages. “Legs’re asleep.”

“Oh for heaven’s sa—“ Aziraphale bites off his own muffled indignation and closes his book, wiggling toward the end of the sofa. “Come on then, there’s plenty of room for you to stretch out.”

There isn’t though. Not really. Not without part of Crowley ending up on part of Aziraphale. Which appears to be the plan, Crowley realizes, as he leans up on an elbow and eyes Aziraphale, sidelong.

“Yeah?”

Aziraphale’s eyes are soft in the dim light, blinking rather a lot.

“If you’d like.”

It is dark enough, hopefully, to hide the whims of his circulatory system. Blood in his cheeks and pulse hammering away in his throat. A flush so intense his ears feel hot with it.

He pulls his legs up, slides fully onto the sofa.

Which means his head has nowhere left to go but _down_ , onto the thick spread of Aziraphale’s bare thighs. His toes tingle. It might not be from poor circulation.

“That’s better,” Aziraphale says, as if it is completely normal to have his best friend’s head in his lap, ear pressed to thigh as if hoping to hear the sound of his bloodstream moving through it. The echo of the ocean in a seashell.

“Yeah,” he breathes, and tries very hard to regulate his inhalations. Slowly. One. Two. Three. Four. It feels like he has been sprinting, or maybe recently frightened. Out of breath and flooded with energy. But there is nothing to fear here. No danger. Nothing to run from. Only the quiet hum of his ice-maker, the black-and-white film about a human playing chess, Aziraphale opening his book again.

Every tendon in his body feels ratcheted tight, ready to razor through his skin. He has never been more aware of how heavy his skull is, whether Aziraphale has noticed it, if he thinks it’s uncomfortable, _dense_. It is, he thinks, blinking rapidly, he's dense. So dense. How did he end up here. On this sofa. Head on Aziraphale's bare legs. This isn't what friends do. Is it? Is it? Perhaps it is. He had never had friends, not really, not like this. Aziraphale has been the only one, ever, and they had never been free to show any sort of intimacy. Not with Heaven breathing down their necks, Hell looking up his skirts. Do friends do this? Is this okay?

He tries to keep the weight of his dense, _stupid_ head off of his thighs. As if Aziraphale will think more fondly of him for not having the typical weight of a human head. His neck gets tired. The muscles there are probably visibly tense. Should he move?

He is considering it, thinking of the best way to slide himself out of his position and into one that might make Aziraphale more comfortable-- like perhaps plastering himself to the floor at his feet. But then a hand comes up, idly, as if unaware of where it is or what it is doing, and slides through the hair on the back of Crowley’s neck, by the ear.

Exactly all of his nerve endings stand on alarmed end, desperate, thirsty. The incessant throw of his heart quietly folds over into something else, something buoyant and effervescent. Butterflies again. The origami crane perhaps flapping its wings.

His breath hitches, he’s probably being weird. He tries to breathe through it, focus on Death on the screen, with his black robe and terrible face, the moves the human makes in an attempt to outsmart him.

But Aziraphale makes a sort of soft hum in the back of his throat, turning a page, the hand at Crowley’s neck rubbing absently, like he doesn’t notice. Like he hadn't gripped his hand there earlier and thumbed a tiny circle into Crowley's skin. Like he hadn't been pressed all the way inside of him while he'd done it. 

The fingers comb through his hair, tug idly at a tangle. There’s a sort of embarrassing and broken noise that rises up out of Crowley’s chest, around the origami crane, through his mouth.

“Oh,” Aziraphale says, as if he just now has realized what he’s been doing. “Did that hurt?”

“No,” Crowley manages, blinking hard and trying to focus on the television. “Felt— s'nice.”

There is an unsteady exhale behind him, as if Aziraphale has been holding his breath too or at least struggling with it. He clears his throat.

“Good,” he settles on, eventually, and as if emboldened by the admission, ventures further out beyond the topography of Crowley’s ear.

There is a feeling like cool water being poured down his neck, warmth filling up his chest. Aziraphale's hand is warm and solid and real and _gentle--_ gentle most of all. His eyes slide closed, muscles relaxing, tension draining. The tendons that had previously felt wired tight release into boneless pleasure, he forgets the weight of his body, lets himself drift suspended, soft.

Somewhere, deep in a place padded by blissful sensation, he knows they won’t talk about this, about Aziraphale playing with his hair, about him sleeping on his lap. It will be another thing piled onto the bonfire of experiences that they do not discuss. An intimacy that they had stumbled into headlong and did not know what to do with. So it will remain untouched on a shelf along with the myriad other intimacies. Things they ignore. Things that either one of them could use as an emotional projectile at any given moment against the other but he _won’t_ , Crowley knows. Aziraphale would never. Not now. Not after all of this.

Something locks into place. A joining of realizations and platonic familiarity. It hides underneath the sticky vulnerability and a fat layer of shame, revealed only in this catatonic state magicked up by Aziraphale’s hands combing through his hair, petting at his neck, playing with his ear.

He trusts him-- with his life, obviously and with other things too, more delicate things, more breakable. 

Crowley opens his eyes long enough to see the chess pieces on the telly get knocked over, then supernaturally rearranged. Death mouths something that Crowley cannot quite hear, not with his one ear pressed against Aziraphale’s thigh and the volume down to near nothing.

But Aziraphale, who has seen this film too, once, long ago, dragged there by Crowley when it first came out in cinemas, twists his fingers into Crowley’s hair at the words, a bit more firmly than usual. Protective almost. Or possessive.

It feels good, like all of Aziraphale does, always. 

His eyes close again and he gives himself over to sleep, letting go at last.


	15. rack focus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> working hard to deserve my tags on this one

He wakes up. Slowly, and then all at once.

His face is mashed into a pillow. A blanket has twisted itself around his body. There is an arm slung beneath the pillow his head rests on and the other is… gone. He has a moment of panic, yanking his head up, blinking blearily, his brain registering only that there is a lack of sensory input where a hand should be before he realizes that the offending limb is merely hanging over the edge of the sofa, circulation lost.

He pulls it up, flexes the fingers, marvels at the pin-prickling discomfort.

His mouth is dry, his eyes feel crusty. There is a not insignificant amount of drool on the pillow he has been smashed into and it takes him a moment to realize that this _isn’t_ the thing he had fallen asleep on.

No angel.

He sits up.

There is not, in fact, any sign of Aziraphale in his flat. The espresso machine sits nestled back in its usual home. The kitchen is impossibly clean. If it were not for the empty wine bottle peaking out of the bin he would assume that he had hallucinated the entire evening.

And then, much like how he had woken up, the memory of the prior night drifts into focus: slowly, and then all at once.

He had… curled into Aziraphale’s lap like some kind of simpering feral animal. Practically begging for pets, affection, _lo_ —

His throat closes around the thought, constricts it, attempts to swallow it like some kind of defense mechanism. And then it eases, incrementally— remembering the way Aziraphale had been the one to reach out, offer up the touches, the gentle untangling of his messy hair.

Those persistent internal insects writhe in his stomach, flutter their wings. It all feels different in the morning light. There are no shadows here to hide in. The flat feels confrontational and judgmental. He looks around. The sofa knows what happened. The armchair too.

His head swims, on account of the alcohol perhaps, the sheer volume of which had clearly not been entirely expelled by his vomiting the night prior.

His joints groan as he untangles himself from the blanket.

There is a strange thickness to his thoughts, the sunlight through his windows feels unnaturally bright. Interrogating.

His heart pumps. His throat burns.

What had they— did it—

He hears the tap turn on in the bathroom, down the hall, then turn off. There is the flick of the light switch descending and then out from the shadows an Aziraphale emerges, dressed entirely in neatly pressed clothing. The bow tie is back on. The waistcoat is buttoned. He must have used a miracle, or perhaps popped home to the bookshop and then back at some point in the night, probably disgusted with the snores that Crowley inevitably produced in his sleep and maybe he had been drooling even _then_ , on Aziraphale’s bare _leg_ and isn’t _that_ the most awful thing he can think of. What other gross displays of humanity had he exhibited over night? Had he said anything in his sleep? Maybe he had mumbled something embarrassing. Been accosted with a case of midnight flatulence. At least he had not eaten the cheese. He thinks. Had he? Oh fuck.

“Oh,” Aziraphale says, spotting him over the back of the sofa. “You’re awake. Good morning.”

“Hi,” he manages, stiffly, feeling incredibly naked on multiple fronts. Betrayed yet again by his body’s need for petty and unending maintenance. His hair probably looks like a haystack. He needs to brush his teeth. His stomach growls.

“You’re dressed,” he comments, and wonders yet again why he speaks at all. Of course he’s dressed. Idiot.

“I am,” Aziraphale says, as if it’s not the world’s most obvious statement. “I can leave if you need time alone before we— before— well.” He smoothes his hands down his front and glances over at the espresso machine. “Have you tried it?”

“No. Not yet. Listen, you don’t have to— we can go together. Just—“

“I’ll treat you to breakfast,” Aziraphale says quickly, strangely breathless. “If you’re hungry.”

“Course, yeah. Hungry. Always.”

His hand is doing some sort of strange, idiotic gesture, hanging in the air. Perhaps on account of it dangling off the sofa the entire night, bereft of blood flow. He forces it down.

“Excellent. Yes. Well, take your time, really. There’s no—“

The word that jumps off of the ledge of his sentence is _rush_ , of course it is, and they both know it. But there is, obviously, a rush. He doesn’t have to say it.

“I’ll just shower and we can go. Be quick.”

Aziraphale nods.

He gets up. His legs feel like they are skyscrapers, four hundred meters long and ungainly and he might trip on his own feet. He isn’t wearing joggers, or pajama bottoms, or trousers of any sort and he is confronted with that fact as he stands and realizes the front of his underwear is stretched out on the basis of him having Mayfair’s most visible account of morning wood.

He stares down at it in suspended terror, a bizarre high-rise in its own right.

He grabs the pillow by instinct, then the blanket, pretending like he had just been tidying up. Of course that’s what he’s doing. He’s tidy. That’s what Aziraphale had called him yesterday and that’s all he’s doing now. Just cleaning up, as one does.

He must, at some point in his life, look up. He cannot spend the rest of his days looking at his own crotch in horror so he forces his head up, his eyes too.

Aziraphale is not looking at him, seemingly occupied with inspecting his own nail beds. His ears, however, are bright red.

He’d seen it. Of course. Not that it matters. It had been inside of him, for someone’s sake. This shouldn’t matter.

“K,” he manages, if somewhat squeakily. “Be right out.”

Aziraphale hums an affirmative but doesn’t look up.

And as he passes by him, arms squeezed around the blanket and pillow he has the overwhelming desire to squeeze them around Aziraphale instead. Press a kiss into his cheek. Stick his nose into his ear.

He doesn’t, of course he doesn’t. Even if his stride stutters a bit as he passes by, takes it a bit too slowly, stares at the biscuit colored backside. He doesn’t. He wants to. He won’t.

He dumps the pillow and the blanket on his bed. Decidedly not tidy. But there’s no time. _Rush_ , he thinks again, and heads for the bathroom, head filled with thoughts of kisses.

So it’s tooth brushing and showering and shaving, again. Rinse and repeat. And as he squints through the foggy mirror and tries his best to not slice off a section of his own jaw he considers that had not ever appreciated how much time he had, before. So much of his day is taken up by small acts of maintenance. He does not know how humans stand this, how they had ever managed to get anything done.

He towels off. He gets dressed. He trims his nails and tries not to think about putting them inside of Aziraphale as he does it. He thinks instead about humans building pyramids and churches, how at the time they had been erected in mere blinks of an eye, back then. Back when he used to count the centuries by the number of times he could run into Aziraphale and still pass it off as an accident. Back when he used to sleep for the years between meetings and stave off the loneliness with an infernal tolerance for alcohol and a class of drugs that would now probably off him in a fortnight.

He wishes he could go back. He had not truly appreciated any of it, before.

Aziraphale is still in the kitchen, camera packed, ready.

“Walk?” Crowley asks, appreciating the socks he is currently wearing and the fact that Mayfair is really quite close to Soho.

“Drive,” Aziraphale says. “If you please. It’ll be faster.”

And as they get in the car Crowley thinks about Aziraphale desiring speed, finally, and how very badly he wishes they could slow down.

* * *

“You won’t have to— look, it isn’t a blessing, really—“

Aziraphale has his hands up, defensive, and Crowley’s throat is a bit itchy. He clears it.

“What did you do?”

“Well, much like the convenient spot that appeared in front of the cafe I am merely reassuring you that such a place might also exist—“

“Aziraphale.”

He fiddles with the radio, turning it down.

“Hands on the wheel, dear.”

Not that it matters. They drive now at a snail’s pace, battered that way by Aziraphale’s incessant commentary and the apparently human inconvenience of having to stop at crosswalks, behind slow-moving lorries, buses that pause at every corner.

“So I didn’t just get lucky, then?” He hadn’t thought so anyway. Aziraphale is many things, but subtle is hardly one of them. He smiles without looking over, knowing if he did that Aziraphale would scold him for tearing his eyes away from the windshield for one measly second.

“Not quite.”

The butterflies are back. Maybe that paper crane. It feels like there is a folded envelope in his throat. A love letter inside. He wants to say, _yeah well, I’m lucky because I’m with you_ , but swallows it down around the sharp thing, that folded paper. He can’t stop smiling; that big, big feeling is back in his chest. He isn’t sure if it had ever gone away.

Aziraphale does not seem to notice, satiated perhaps on too much breakfast and too much worry, a permanent crease settled between his eyebrows.

“Are you telling me I can come drive over to you any time now?”

He doesn’t know why he says it. Maybe because _Pale Blue Eyes_ is playing on the radio and he can hear it, just barely. How many times had he driven around London with the same song playing, thinking of the same angel sitting next to him. It feels like old times. Like before.

 _Linger on_ , Lou Reed sings, and Crowley wonders about the sentience of an automobile that now requires petrol and oil changes. _I will, I will,_ he thinks. He flexes his fingers on the steering wheel, grips it a little tighter. _I have._

“You could always do that,” Aziraphale says softly. “Always. Anytime. It will just be saf—“ He clears his throat and Crowley can feel him looking over at him, staring at his ear. It feels hot. “Easier.” He settles on, eventually, a hand cupped threateningly on the Bentley’s door panel.

It’s too warm in this car, too small, vaguely itchy. He remembers that he had made some sort of statement about having Aziraphale here, in it, and he realizes that such a thing will be nearly impossible. The Betamax itself takes up nearly the entire front seat.

If this were before, he would have said something about how Aziraphale is just making it easier to tempt him. Tease him about it. Say something sarcastic that Aziraphale would choose not to understand. What an angel, he’d have said, making things more accessible for a demon. What a _good deed_. 

But that idea feels like a ghost now, haunting a graveyard of previous thoughts. A dead thing that doesn’t exist. He can’t make jokes about a thing that is true.

The big, big feeling deflates a little. An angel doing a good deed is hardly something to feel giddy about.

There’s a line in this song that he can barely hear, a line that he knows by heart, of course. _It was good what we did yesterday._ A throw away line he never cared much about, before, but one that sticks to him now. Caught in that intersection of a throat.

It was good, he tells himself, trying not to panic about how they are definitely not talking about how he had slept with his head on Aziraphale’s bare lap. It was good.

He swallows.

And sure enough there is a space, an entire street really, bereft of cars even on a busy stretch of Soho. Aziraphale seems a bit surprised by the magnitude of the emptiness.

“Oh.”

“Went a bit over the top, did you?”

Aziraphale looks over at him, worried again, always.

“Do you really think so?”

If this were before, he thinks, he’d tease until the worry in Aziraphale’s eyes turned to agitation. Just for kicks. Another schoolyard flirtation. But that love letter is sharp inside his throat. A threat. And one corner of his mouth lifts in a smile, beholden only to Aziraphale.

“No,” he says, and his throat feels so very, very tight. “It’s good.”

* * *

It feels like ages since he has been here, despite it being only a few days. Perhaps time feels longer the more human he becomes, on account of it suddenly being finite.

The curtains have been pulled, the lights are off. He removes his sunglasses because he cannot reliably see indoors with them on anymore. Not even a little bit.

He folds them and puts them in his pocket.

There is a memory of the last time he had been here. Over there. Beneath the sofa. A feeling of carpet with a suitably high nap and angelic ejaculate on his hand. A memory of panic.

He had been… unspeakably short-tempered then. To an Aziraphale who had only ever been trying to help.

His throat hurts. It’s not the love letter.

Aziraphale is shrugging out of his coat and slipping on another one, the housecoat, fuzzy and soft and infinitely touchable. A more gentle layer between them.

“We have—“ Aziraphale clears his throat and stares straight ahead, then down at the floor, “—a number of different scenes we can try for today.”

Crowley shoves his fists in his pockets. His shoulders migrate up towards his ears. He can feel his clavicles morphing into basins, cupping like warped floorboards.

“Yeah?”

“Yes— we can—“ Aziraphale pauses and swallows and looks toward the sofa, where it has been moved back into its usual location. “There was—“

Crowley’s stomach folds into itself, balls up and lodges itself in his throat.

“The sofa thing,” he says, attempting to help.

“Yes,” Aziraphale affirms, exhaling a bit unsteadily. “If you wish.”

 _If you wish_. As if Crowley hadn’t wished to bend Aziraphale over the arm of that sofa since he’d bought the thing.

“If _you_ wi—“

“Oh,” Aziraphale interrupts, “well no, actually. I should really—“ he shakes his head and blinks and clears his throat, as if he had just grievously embarrassed himself. “No, I suppose I should really shower quite extensively before such a thing I apologize I was not think—“

“No,” Crowley cuts him off, and his hand scratches at the seam in his pocket. “You wouldn’t.” He pauses. “Have to shower, I mean.”

As if Aziraphale did not exist in a state of perfect loveliness, always. As if Crowley wouldn’t suck the filth off of him even if he didn’t.

“Of course I would.”

He can feel his eyebrows knit together against himself, another bodily tell, revealing far too much.

“No,” he says and wants to punch himself in the stomach for saying it, “you wouldn’t.”

Aziraphale’s pulse is visible in his neck, against the collar of his shirt.

He wants to lean in, press his lips to it, tell him: _there’s nothing you are that I do not want._ Good mood, bad mood, imperfect. All of it, always.

“I believe,” Aziraphale begins, tonguing at his teeth and looking Crowley up and down as if ascertaining whether he is strong enough to hear whatever he is about to say, “that of all people you would be… _empathetic_ to such a feeling.”

He can’t help it, he barks out a laugh and then bites down on it.

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am.”

He can feel his smile dimming, transmuting instead into a sort of quiet simmering fondness, warmth spreading through his veins.

“Not _quite_ the same, angel.”

He can see Aziraphale shift his weight back and forth, watches as he stares down at the floor. The heartbeat is still visible in that pale neck, pumping immortal blood.

There is a thread of panic that flows through him, at the abject stillness of Aziraphale standing before him, at the paleness of his color. He has the striking sensation that he has said something wrong, or injured Aziraphale in some way that he hadn’t understood.

“Hey,” he says, and reaches out that ineffectual hand again, the one that had gone numb overnight. “S’fine. Whatever you’re comfortable with. Later or, whenever really,” he breathes. “Or never.”

“It’s on the list—“

“Fuck the list.”

The bow tie looks painfully tight around Aziraphale’s neck and Crowley wonders, again, why he wears it.

“But it’s our—“

“ _Fuck the list_.”

He watches Aziraphale masticate through the idea of no list, no plan— and it occurs to Crowley all at once how such a thing might feel to him. Floating. Unmoored. Aziraphale needs plans, structure, something to believe in. A facet of his angelic heritage that he had never quite been able to turn off.

“If you want,” Crowley adds softly, in light of recent understandings. “It’s just— if it makes you that uncomfortable that option is off the table.”

He won’t stand for it. Hell and immortality be damned. Again.

“No,” Aziraphale says, and Crowley watches as that delicate jaw flexes beneath suddenly pink cheeks and the blue in Aziraphale’s eyes turns to steel. “It’s not that— I just— you know. I didn’t know if you—“

His hands keep flexing, opening, closing.

“Whatever you want,” Crowley says.

_Anywhere you want to go._

He smiles despite himself, despite the situation, aware that he is now inside of that bookshop that he had been parked outside of all those decades ago, aware now of what that Crowley then had not: that Aziraphale’s mouth tastes warm and soft and sweet, that the skin on his neck smells faintly like caramel, always, that he sighs Crowley’s name when he comes.

And just like that the happiness melts down into a less precious mineral, aware too that it is mere physicality propped up on a situational requirement and nothing else. Friendship, of course. A favor.

Aziraphale licks his lips. “Okay,” he says.

_Okay, okay, okay._

One, two, three, four.

“Okay.”

And then the Panasonic gets opened and set up and telescoped out on its long long legs, pointed toward the end of the Chesterfield sofa with its two opposite colored throw blankets. His and his. Married in all of the ways that don’t matter.

“And if— if you want to stop that’s fine too,” Crowley finds himself saying, only partially lucid, half of his brain stuck on what they are about to do, the breathtaking intimacy of it. “We can stop and rewind it. Tape back over it.”

Aziraphale is nodding quietly and blinking rapidly and staring down at the camera, his pulse still visible in his neck. He looks frightened, or strung very tightly, and Crowley squeezes his hand into a fist, uncertain of how to fix it.

“Of course, yes. Brilliant. If it goes terribly we can just— just go back. To the start.”

Aziraphale steps out from behind the camera, hands tugging at his coat sleeves, the hem of his waistcoat.

“Sofa?” Crowley asks.

“Oh,” he says, finally looking up. “Sofa. Yes. That’s a good place to start.”

“We can—“

“—Kiss?”

“Kiss. Yes,” Crowley agrees, probably too quickly. “On the mouth,” he adds, because what they are about to do seems a whole lot like French kissing and he should probably specify.

“Perhaps— It can be a… we can transition this into something else.”

“Something else?”

“Another scene. You know. This doesn’t have to be an… extended engagement.”

“Oh,” Crowley says, something deflating in his chest, punctured. “Course. Yeah.”

“I’m merely tempering expectations,” Aziraphale says, and is staring somewhere down around the floor.

“Expectations?”

The skin above his bow tie is pink, swiftly reddening, on account of the pressure from the fabric or perhaps stress.

“I— I will most likely not achieve orgasm from such a thing,” he says, hurriedly. “So it would be prudent to have a plan perhaps to— to allow for a different ending. As not to… draw things out unnecessarily long.”

Crowley blinks and swallows and tries not to think about the implication of what Aziraphale is saying. He’s willing to do it. He won’t orgasm from it. He forces himself to look at Aziraphale’s hands gathered up and fidgeting in front of his stomach and to swallow down the budding jealousy, that niggling voice in the back of his head that reminds him _he’s tried it_. _He doesn’t like it. You won’t be any different._

Crowley grinds down on his back molars and won’t allow himself to feel possessive. He will certainly not mourn for the times he had wished to do such a thing, not knowing that Aziraphale did not enjoy it. And he will not allow himself to think about some faceless human or, God— Satan— _Someone_ , another _angel_ doing that to Aziraphale. He _won’t_.

“Sure,” he says, instead of thinking about it. Which he isn’t. “You can just— just say ‘no more’ or, or tap your hand on the sofa twice when you don’t— you know. When you’re finished.”

He won’t think about how many times it took for Aziraphale to realize that he didn’t like it. Five times? A dozen? Once? He refuses.

“Yes,” Aziraphale says softly. “I shall… tap the sofa twice when I’m— when I wish to be finished and we can— can change scenes.”

“Yeah. You can turn over. I’ll—I’ll suck you off or, _whatever_ really. Whatever you want.”

There is a strange sort of withering silence between them and then Aziraphale gives a quiet huff of an inhale and turns to him.

“And— when— I mean, if _you_ want to stop at any point of course that is entirely understandable. Even if that point comes before you ever even— before, you know.”

His hands wring together in front of him, the gold angelic ring spins idly on his pinky finger.

“Yeah,” Crowley says, absently. “Okay.”

“Sofa?”

“Sofa.”

Aziraphale sits and still doesn’t quite look at him, ankles crossed, fidgeting. Crowley sinks down next to him, a respectable distance apart.

“So we’ll kiss,” he says, at last.

“We’ll kiss,” Crowley agrees.

“And then we will— we will…”

“I’ll probably get, erm, down,” Crowley says, and for fuck’s sake there is entirely too much blood in his neck, his face. “On the floor, I mean.”

“And I’ll be…?”

Crowley gets up, looks down the length of the sofa. The rounded arms of the thing are higher than he had anticipated, than he had really thought about when he had come up with this ridiculous story.

“Here,” he says, and reaches out a hand without thinking.

Aziraphale takes it, effortlessly, and a shock of electric current seems to race through his veins, straight to his heart.

“Like this,” he forces himself to say, entirely breathless. He tugs on the hand until Aziraphale is in front of him, facing that arched and tufted curve of his worn leather sofa.

It’s just shy of hip height, coming up considerably higher on Aziraphale’s body on account of his shorter legs. And just the thought of those legs, shorter than his own— stronger, thicker, softer— sends a ridiculous skittering wave of butterflies arcing through his stomach. The love letter is plastered over his windpipe.

“Like this?”

And Aziraphale is bending over the arm in his fuzzy pale housecoat, landing on his elbows on the sofa beyond, bent nearly in half at the waist.

Crowley is confronted with the broad and tan expanse of the seat of Aziraphale’s trousers, stretched alluringly over the roundest part of him. He attempts to swallow and to get his brain to work, leveling with himself that he’s about to be face-first in this remarkable view only with a good deal less clothing.

“Yeah,” he manages, considerably more choked than he’d wanted. “Are you okay? Is that… comfortable?”

Aziraphale wiggles back and forth on his elbows, the pale fluffy head looks around the sofa.

“It’s actually quite lovely.”

“But you’re still holding your weight— what if you—“

Crowley grabs a handful of overstuffed pillows, throws them down on the floor. And then he lifts Aziraphale’s ankle, touches softly at his knee, hinges it.

“Rest them on here?”

Aziraphale glances over his shoulder and allows Crowley to bend his other leg up into an equally supportive position. He sags his weight fully over the sofa and shimmies back and forth.

“Oh that’s much better,” he says, and then lifts himself up. “You ought to have one as well.”

And that’s how five mismatched pillows end up on the floor by the sofa, Aziraphale fluffing the single middle one until Crowley has to finally tap him on the wrist.

“Hey,” he says, “it’s good.”

“You have to— you really should protect those knees.”

Aziraphale doesn’t look at him when he says it, but stops fussing and takes himself over to the sofa all the same.

Crowley sits next to him, an arm’s length apart again. They stare out at nothing for a stretch of seconds.

“Are you ready then?” Aziraphale asks, and Crowley can hear the sound of him breathing, could probably hear the pump of his heart were it not for the noisy sound of life outside on a busy Soho street.

“Yeah,” he says, and licks his lips. “Whenever you are.”

“Right.” That fair head tilts down and there is still that pulse point in his neck, pressing against the bow tie. Crowley had been expecting him to get up, turn the camera on, perhaps snap his fingers and turn into the damned darling magician he had known all those years ago. A performer. Someone confident and sure.

But instead there’s just more silence, more humans loudly walking by on the pavement, more unsteady breathing.

“Are you—“

Crowley’s voice seems to startle him, and he glances up and swallows and then seems to remember himself.

“Yes yes, of course,” Aziraphale says quickly. “I know you said that I don’t— well, I’m sure you were just being polite you really— Perhaps I’ll just—“

Aziraphale raises a hand. His right one. His dominant one. The one he performs miracles with. And there is a sort of perfect completed understanding that Crowley grasps as he does so and before he can fully contemplate the action he catches it. Crowley’s left holding Aziraphale’s right by the steady and strong wrist, stopping the miracle.

Aziraphale looks at him, finally, lips parting on account of shock, the sudden skin to skin contact.

“Don’t do that on my account,” he says, and watches as Aziraphale’s eyes glance back and forth between his, confused. “I ‘ _don’t enjoy the implication_ ’,” he murmurs, and can feel that corner of his mouth, the one that belongs to Aziraphale, lifting in a smile.

Aziraphale catches the fond dig, at his earlier words, yesterday. His eyebrows draw in tight, then relax. A curious sort of searching expression crosses his face.

And then it gets shelved, placed carefully away. Crowley can see it happen: the deliberate and measured blinks, the mouth that purses into what had probably been a question but then flattens out into a resolute line. He seems to chew on the idea for a moment, and then the confusion in his eye gives way to a half-hearted tease.

“Not _quite_ the same, my dear, is it?”

Crowley can feel his face crack. Split right down the middle into a smile. The bastard. He’s back, in some small capacity. His heart feels like it’s about to split in half too.

“I recall that your face was _very_ close to me while I was naked and folded in half yesterday. _Both_ times.”

“It was my _hand_ touching you, Crowley.”

He sucks his teeth and rolls his eyes up to the ceiling.

“I’ll hold my breath,” he says, and rolls his head over to stare at him, smiling. Aziraphale still looks uneasy, apparently unamused by the joke. “Hey,” Crowley says, suddenly serious. “If it would make you more comfortable, you know, go ahead.” He waves that ineffective hand again. “But you’re— it’s not—“ he grinds his teeth together and breathes through his nose, trying to find the right words. “You don’t have to change anything. Not for me.”

There is that alarming quiet again, a stretch of mingled respirations and curious, confused glances. Had he said too much? Perhaps he had frightened Aziraphale. With his always _too much_ and his always _too fast_. He had never been very good at going slow. He sucks his teeth. He counts his heartbeats, tries to slow down. One, two, three, four.

“Thank you.”

Crowley glances over at him, finally, to see Aziraphale’s face open and curious, something in his gaze searching. As if he isn’t quite sure what to make of such a statement.

“Oh,” Crowley says, and tries to swallow down around that ridiculous tightening of his throat. “Shut up.”

A corner of Aziraphale’s lip quirks up and Crowley wonders, _hopes_ , that it’s beholden to him too.

“Are you ready, my dear?”

“Yeah.”

“Glasses,” Aziraphale reminds him.

“Oh,” Crowley says. “Right.” And says goodbye to life in color.

His hand rises up again, that right one, the dominant one.

“It’s just for the camera,” Aziraphale says softly, and Crowley doesn’t miss the tremor in his bottom lip when he says it, the devastating weight of trust in his eyes.

He nods because he can’t quite get his tongue to move.

The fingers snap, the camera rolls, and there is one second of hesitation before a strange sort of energy passes over them. A cloud of plausible deniability, heady and thick.

There is that one second, a heartbeat or two, and then Crowley is leaning in, cupping Aziraphale’s jaw in one hand and pressing a kiss into the corner of his mouth that had smiled at him. His corner. _His_.

He squeezes his eyes closed and pushes down against the tightness of his throat, the strange welling of emotion and also liquid in his tear ducts. A symptom of impending humanity or perhaps not enough sleep.

Aziraphale makes tiny broken noises into it, grasping at Crowley’s forearms, sliding around his back, by the shoulder blades. He lays Aziraphale down against the flat of the sofa, feeling predatory and protective, _reverent_.

He could kiss him forever, never tire of the topography of his lips, the inquisitive tilt of the tip of his nose, the stubbornness of his round chin. Eyes closed and mouth opening, he has the brief desire for them to never finish filming, if only so that he can kiss Aziraphale until this mortal body expires.

“Oh,” Aziraphale breathes, when they break apart for gulps of air, heaved against damp skin. “Crowley.”

“ _Angel_ ,” he all but growls, feeling strangely possessive, absolutely not thinking of how he will attempt to succeed where others had failed. His hand slides from jaw to neck, thumb brushing over the strong column of his throat.

There’s a full body shiver as his fingers rest there, an alluring thump of pulse beneath his thumb. He can feel all the veins, the arteries, the lines of muscle and delicate anatomy. He thumbs up beneath his chin, rubbing at that bit of stubborn roundness, another souvenir from all their slices of cake at greasy spoons and pastries from regional patisseries. A memory of crepes.

Aziraphale’s eyes flutter and then close, move up against the hand at his throat. The pulse hammers out harder against Crowley’s hand and he has the striking memory of throwing Aziraphale against a wall, that one time, hands fisted in his collar and their lips so very close.

He couldn’t do then what he can do now and so he kisses him, again, for all the times he wanted to and didn’t. He can feel Aziraphale’s moans beneath his hand and his fingers press the barest amount in, feeling powerful and in control at last, _finally._

 _“Mine_ ,” he says, and immediately panics.

He wrenches back to check Aziraphale’s reaction but there is nothing but open-mouthed sighs and closed eyes, a certain flexing of his neck up into Crowley’s hand. And then that fair head turns, revealing a stretch of pale jaw.

“Yours.”

It’s the breathiest of voices, nearly a whisper, certainly not loud enough to be picked up by the decaying foam around the Panasonic’s microphone.

He withdraws his hand, sliding it instead to the safer expanse of Aziraphale’s side, that housecoat. He stares down at him curiously, calculating what exactly is being acted and what, if any, of this is real.

None of it, he reminds himself. None of it is real. He blinks and then remembers himself, their job, why they are in this position at all. So before he can question it he kisses him again, for something to do with his mouth, some means of shutting it up.

How long had they been doing this? Five minutes? An hour? He can think only of Aziraphale’s voice and wondering whether he had imagined it, whether it was part of some method acting heretofore undiscussed between them. He only knows that there is an answering reaction between them, a swelling of matching anatomy.

It occurs to him that Aziraphale is letting him orchestrate this, direct it even, content to lie there flat on his back and let Crowley kiss every inch of his face. An attempt perhaps to demonstrate a submission that might please demons, show off his wiles.

Not, he thinks— as he pulls Aziraphale upright and yanks clumsily at that bow tie that had been suffocating his angel the entire morning— that he has very many of those to speak of.

“Up,” he commands, in what he hopes is a deep and dominating tone.

Aziraphale’s eyes flash, his eyebrow quirks, and Crowley sucks his teeth in an attempt to fight down the flush of blood in his cheeks.

 _Yes,_ he thinks as he fists Aziraphale’s open collar in his hands and stands him toward the end of the sofa, _you could snap me in half but you don’t have to flaunt it_.

He circles him, crosses his arms around the wealth of Aziraphale’s stomach, beneath his arms, squeezes him tight. Molded front to delicious back. His nose finds its way into the shadows behind Aziraphale’s ear, sucking up the warm honey smell of him.

“Down,” he whispers, and is rewarded with the shivering of Aziraphale’s muscles, either a practiced reaction or a real one he cannot tell.

Aziraphale hesitates for a moment and then bends in half, hinges himself over the sofa, arms tucked up close to his face. Crowley slides a hand up his spine, over his clothes, feeling for a heartbeat, morse code in the flexing of his muscles, some anatomical tell of consent. Aziraphale does him one better though, pushing back and humming some desperate tone in his throat.

Crowley blinks and breathes and has to rein in the desire to throw his glasses off, to view this spectacle in full-color. He settles for folding to his knees, a supplication, hands rising in worship to touch softly at the edges of angelic hip.

There is that expanse of tan backside again, infinitely closer. There is his pulse in the roof of his mouth, hands sliding around to Aziraphale’s front and fingers at the button, the zip, uncertain. He fumbles there for a moment before Aziraphale’s hand joins his, tugs at the button, deftly pulls on the zipper.

And then that hand gets shoved back up under his pale cheek, the demure fluff of white curls.

He hesitates, like always, confronted with how terrible all of this had been, how terrible it _is_. Confronted with the fact that he had lied, once, twice, the _whole time_ — about his feelings in all of this. And as the trousers descend and the white of Aziraphale’s skin emerges it occurs to him that he’s been lying to himself too.

Aziraphale’s skin still smells like the cheap soap he’d purchased, the one that had probably given Crowley an allergic reaction the morning prior. He watches as Aziraphale’s back arches, at the shock of cool air perhaps, what with his trousers shoved hastily down around his knees. There is the strange desire to fetch a blanket, something to tuck in around Aziraphale’s edges and keep him warm, make him comfortable.

He blinks behind his glasses.

He’d been lying. The whole time. To his best friend.

Crowley’s fingers ease up and smooth themselves across the white skin, the unblemished stretch of fine-grained flesh, rippling in gooseflesh.

He should have told him.

Perhaps it is because he is more human now, less demon, less evil— that the implications of what he has done to them both kicks him in the chest.

Aziraphale is moaning something, tiny half-stilted phrases, _acting_.

And even as something in his chest twists at the breathy monologue he leans down and presses a kiss into that soft pale skin, murmurs his thanks.

“Okay?” He whispers, because he always asks and always will, even if Aziraphale can’t hear it.

“ _Yes_ ,” is the breathy reply, the one he had been saying before the question and continues to say after it. A litany of platitudes.

So he parts him with his fingers and kisses everywhere he can reach, which is most of him, gently at first, no tongue. An exercise in mapping the territory, a cartographer in a place he had seen once and dreamed about often, doodling marginalia of strictly fantastical sexual origins.

 _Soap_ , he thinks, because he has to breathe still, no matter what he’d told Aziraphale. Soap and linen from his finely tailored clothing, the smell of clean skin bereft of use, and something else, something bright and crisp— _heaven,_ he thinks. Actual Heaven. The place that had felt like a bright winter morning at daybreak, cold and clean, until the hellfire. 

He charts Aziraphale’s sighs, the shape of his breathing, notates them in the margins of his map.

And then he licks, because he has to but more importantly because he _wants_ to, up that pink plain of skin behind his balls, already drawn up tight. Then up the center of him, interspersed with kisses.

 _Rome_ , he thinks, _I’d do this for you over those stone tables_. Drunk and dressed in scratchy linen, new in town and desperate to leave. He had thought about spilling wine down the white of him. About finding how far it would soak into his clothes, what it would taste like when he found it.

He rubs his thumbs across the soft skin at the center of him, and then tastes him for the first time.

There’s a choked, hitched inhale. The stuttering gasp of his name.

 _Wessex_ , he remembers, and thinks about doing this in a waxed canvas tent, spread across a bed of furs, grass poking up through the cracks. The distant singing of metal instruments against metal armor cut by their own moans. Mud and sweat less a deterrent and more of an unenviable fact. Something to be swallowed and not talked about.

He doesn’t miss how Aziraphale shivers beneath his hands, is clearly biting down on a blanket. How his hips roll back, forward, as if uncertain whether to press into the touch or to shy away from it.

And it’s the shying that does it— that makes him lean all the way in until he can’t anymore, because he needs Aziraphale to know, implicitly, that there is nothing about him that needs to be altered. Not the out of date clothing or the occasional bitchy attitude. Not the tendency to order food for Crowley and then eat it himself. Not the unfortunate memories of Aziraphale telling him _no, we can’t, I don’t even like you_.

He’ll swallow it. All of it. The good and the bad and the idiosyncratic. Perhaps he had been made a snake for a reason. The better to unhinge a jaw. Swallow things whole. The fat _and_ the bones.

He’s aware, somewhere, of his body tightening, heating, compressing. But it feels distant, as if he is experiencing it by proxy, through a tube from far away. And the angel in front of him is _immediate_ , grinding back and occasionally forward, into the worn leather of the sofa, choking wetly around Crowley’s name.

He watches for the hand, listens for the _no more_.

But he can see Aziraphale gripping the tufted leather until the whites of his knuckles shine through the skin and the fuzzy housecoat shudders around his shoulders with the intensity of his shivering. There’s a strange pang of regret painted with pride. Something that makes him want to say, _I’m better with my real tongue_. The snake one that had always been too long and too sibilant but perhaps had just never found it’s proper purpose.

It’s here, he thinks, and closes his eyes and his throat keeps singing out sounds of his pleasure into Aziraphale. It’s here and it never will be again. Even if he makes it out alive.

But he does not think about that just like he did not think about past lovers and the ways that they had very clearly failed at this. He thinks about purpose and he thinks about committing the sound and taste of Aziraphale to memory, about what he would say if he could hear Crowley’s thoughts.

It would probably be something like, _well my dear you cannot judge a fish by how well it rides a velocipede after all,_ and he laughs into Aziraphale’s skin, bizarrely, obliquely joyful. 

He kneads the flex of bottom in his hands and licks into him, thrilled by the unerring softness and the wealth of angel in front of him. His ungainly hands that had always seemed too big and too bony are now not big enough to hold all of him at once, a thing that should not bring him joy but does anyway. There are more memories of crepes. Of good food and good wine and a good, fat, happy angel.

And as he squeezes him apart and pushes into him all the way he does not miss how the body beneath his abruptly flexes. The knees he is bracketed by squeeze tight. The sound of his own name gets choked on and then swallowed. Ejaculate abruptly spills down the side of the sofa and he can’t help it, smiling into Aziraphale’s skin and digging into him further, until that hand finally pulls out from beneath a mass of pale curls and taps. Twice.

He pulls back, reluctantly, thumbs still rubbing pleased little circles into Aziraphale’s skin and he can’t stop smiling. That too large feeling is unfolding itself in his stomach, his whole body is taken up by butterflies, ripping out of the love letter.

He watches Aziraphale pant down into the sofa, the his and his blankets, and then the hand that had tapped him out rises up and snaps again.

The cloud of plausible deniability vanishes, he shouldn’t keep touching him.

So his hands fall away, he moves back, sprawling out inelegantly on the floor. His knees hurt, his face is wet.

He takes his glasses off and sends them skittering away on the carpet, wipes the back of his hand against his mouth. Aziraphale makes no move to get up, breathing heavily down into the sofa until it evens out, calms.

“Are you—“ Crowley reaches out and has every intention of tugging his trousers back up but then withdraws his hand, uncertain if that touch would be appropriate.

At his voice Aziraphale slides back, rolling himself off the arm of the sofa and collapsing back to sit on the overstuffed pillows.

“You okay?”

The fair head turns, eyes glassy, unfocused.

“That was—“ he clears his throat and then seems to wake up, blood traveling up his cheeks to paint them red. “That was— well, wonderful really.”

Crowley grinds down hard on his molars but it doesn’t help, he smiles. Too big.

“Really?”

Aziraphale, as if buoyed up by the smile, offers up a small one of his own.

“Quite spectacular, actually.”

He supposes he should stop smiling. There might as well be a neon sign above his head, glowing pink.

“I didn’t breathe.”

He’s rewarded when Aziraphale huffs out a quiet laugh, straightening his clothes.

“I hope it was—“ he pauses and glances down at Crowley’s lap, then back to some indefinable point on his shoulder, “— _okay_ , for you as well.”

“Yeah,” Crowley starts, and he can’t stop smiling. “It was.”

He watches Aziraphale open his mouth and then close it, watches him stare at that point on his shoulder, not meet his eyes.

“I’m sure you’re quite pr—“

The rest of the sentence gets swallowed and Crowley waits, patiently, staring at the part in Aziraphale’s lips as if he can read the words hidden back behind it.

“Quite what?” He asks.

“We should do another one,” Aziraphale says instead.

“What?”

“Another scene—“

Aziraphale gets up, brushes himself off.

“— _After_ I clean off my sofa,” he mumbles to himself, and then disappears into the backroom.

Crowley glances down at his lap, to the highly visible high-rise again, straining against his jeans.

“Perhaps upstairs,” Aziraphale says, returning and still is not looking at him, walking instead with purpose toward the sofa, towel in hand.

“Upstairs.”

“Yes.”

Crowley sucks his lip into his mouth and stares up at the ceiling, thinking about Rome, those stone tables. Wessex. That waxed tent. His heart beats, too fast. Wanting this on different terms.

“Sure, yeah,” Crowley agrees, and wants to say sorry, apologize, curl up beneath those his and his blankets, be married in all of the ways that _do_ matter. Maybe he should just confess. Out with it already. At least like this he could have a way out, a mortal death and then an eternity in the sulphur pits to think about it, the mail room to remember about Aziraphale every day. “Don’t you need a break?”

He closes his eyes and slams his mouth shut, because the traitorous thing apparently only works when it wants to get him into trouble.

“By the time we move upstairs and set up the camera I should be fine.”

He opens his eyes and catches, for the briefest moment, Aziraphale staring at him. But then he looks away, down, toward the towel in his hand and then the camera.

He wants to say something, anything. But there is a persistent layer of something like cloud cover over his thoughts, burying them. He should reach out, do what Aziraphale had been brave enough to do last night only on a much larger and imminently more fuck-upable scale. Tell him everything. Tell him sorry, and that this is wrong, all of it, and we can’t. _He_ can’t.

Aziraphale keeps sneaking strange glances at him as he folds up the long, long legs of the tripod, as he closes up the camera. There is a secret tucked up in the corner of his mouth, _his_ corner, Crowley can see it.

“Upstairs then?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale answers.

“What will we be doing?”

“Anything.”

“Anything?”

“Yes.”

Crowley reaches for his glasses, puts them back on.

“Kissing?” He asks the dark room.

“Kissing,” Aziraphale says softly. “But perhaps first you could brush your teeth.”


	16. abby singer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you would like a glimpse into the invasive thought I had whilst writing this chapter, please go [here](https://i.imgflip.com/2afrze.jpg).

So he brushes his teeth.

And he stares at himself in the mirror, pink toothbrush handle sticking out from pink lips and frustratingly pink cheeks. A betrayal of capillaries. The skyline of toiletries still lurch at him from behind the taps. The label _for sensitive skin_ judges him from beyond the faucet.

He has to say it. He spits in the sink, slurps water from the tap, spits again. He has to. He looks up. There is no guile in his green eyes. There’s no deception. He can see straight down through the sclera, the innocent white.

He is upstairs in the tiny bathroom with the tiny pedestal sink and there is still a cobweb in the corner, still expensive soap along the ledge, still too many pastel towels. Nothing has changed in this room for decades except for him.

He has to say it. He is not sure how it had gone on this long— four long, long days— or why he had been so complicit in the beginning of those ninety-six hours. He splashes water on his face and considers that maybe the reptilian coldness has been burnt off. Suctioned away. Perhaps the thing that made him demonic had just been a dulling down of accountability. A blindness. Willful ignorance to how terrible things are at any given time.

The green eyes stare back. The pupil is almost entirely round. It does not wildly stretch or contract with the light, not like before. He cannot will the color to flood the whites of his eyes, turn him back, dilute this empathy.

His dark glasses are pushed up onto his head, smoothing back the tangle of hair that had escaped from where he had hastily pulled it back this morning, a lifetime ago. Before he had known what the insides of Aziraphale’s thighs tasted like and before the guilt had sunk into his bones, straight down into the marrow.

He tongues his incisors, monitoring their sharpness. All he finds is a dull edge and the lingering chill of menthol, a thing that is steadily scrubbing away the memory of what Aziraphale tastes like. A thing he will probably not behold again until the camera demands it or the list demands it or Aziraphale decides it would be a good filler of time— the thing they strive for together and Crowley secretly against. That steadily decreasing stretch of plausible deniability. He thinks about an hourglass. Some fragile balanced thing. The sand inside sliding from _time touching Aziraphale_ to _time on this earth_. A thing measured against itself. A one-to-one conversion.

He drops the toothbrush into the cup on the sink, the blue and pink, and considers the weight of his human heart against just one of Aziraphale’s feathers.

He washes his hands. He smoothes back his hair. He takes himself to the door and leans his entire weight against it. His hands shove themselves into fists inside his pockets. The bone of his knuckles feels ready to scissor through his skin.

“Hello,” Aziraphale breathes, as if they are meeting for the first time today. He does not look up from where he fiddles with the camera, telescoping out the long, long legs.

Four days.

“Hi.”

Ninety-six hours.

His shoulders shuck themselves up to his ears and he leans a little further into the doorframe.

“Do you need anything? Food? Water?”

“I just brushed my teeth,” Crowley says, still sharp in some places, and bites down on the meat of his cheek. “Do you need help?”

“No. That’s quite alright.”

It’s a small room, scarcely large enough to hold the double bed, a thing which Crowley imagines Aziraphale to have used all of _once_ in his many years of owning it. He is sure that it must squeak with bedsprings a few hundred years out of use and wishes he had been there when he’d purchased the thing, if only to have advised him to scale up— get a king.

But perhaps it is for the best that he _hadn’t_ — considering how grotesquely intimidating this size is at current. There’s an imposing looking headboard, some antique wooden thing with an open frame, and four posters carved out of mahogany.

He sucks on his teeth.

“How old is this thing anyway?” He kicks at the mattress. “The bed portion.”

Aziraphale glances up.

“I replaced it in the nineteen-sixties although I scarcely remember the year. I’m sure I have a receipt for it somewhere downstairs however.”

“Ever use it?”

He closes his eyes and snaps his mouth shut, gifted in the ability to discern multiple meanings of his words only _after_ they have already been said. He opens his eyes and digs his shoulder into the doorframe.

“Sorry. You don’t—“

“I made a few attempts.”

“Oh.”

_A few attempts_. At sleeping or sex he isn’t sure. He tries to unwind his corkscrew of a throat.

“I do hope the springs haven’t rusted themselves over.”

Crowley imagines Aziraphale bouncing on his lap, quite literally shaking the rust off. He is probably as pink as his toothbrush.

“Yeah,” he agrees, and his voice cracks in two.

He closes his eyes again and pinches at the bridge of his nose, thinking of Aziraphale’s mouth saying _anything_ , that conversation yesterday on his sofa and then last night— Aziraphale’s fingers in his hair, his head on an angelic lap. Feeling finally warm and safe and contented and—

He inhales. Tries to anyway.

The ceiling is so low upstairs. The walls are so close. He might as well be inside the love letter in this eggshell painted upstairs hell. Folded into an envelope four sizes too small. 

“What did you—“

His throat doesn’t work. The words sound strangled. He tries again.

“You said we—?”

“Yes. Anything.”

There is that word again. He scratches at the seam in his pocket. Aziraphale keeps glancing at him and then looking away. Crowley does not know what that means.

“Anything?” Crowley repeats although it warps itself into a question at the last moment. He straightens up from the door. “ _Angel_.”

Aziraphale finally stops fiddling with the camera and turns to him full-on and it’s _there_. The whole stinking moment. It has to come out, it _has to_. This has gone on entirely too long. Ninety-six hours too long. He loves Aziraphale. _Loves him_. The love of a friend, yes, but more than that, deeper. Something subcutaneous. Something he had never been able to excise despite both of their best efforts. That crush that he had nursed like a war wound. A cut that had become gangrenous because they kept sticking their dicks in it.

And the mark that had previously separated the nebulous line between _friend_ and _lover_ is gone now. The line they walk has been erased.

His stomach flips.

Even if this harebrained scheme of theirs _did_ work out where would it lead them? Lead _him_? To a life of immortality after tasting the thing he had always wanted most and then could never have again. A further six-thousand years of want. Another celibate eternity. Platonic. No kisses.

He sways on his feet, grateful for the doorframe holding him up. The room feels like it is spinning.

The apple, he thinks, has already been plucked. The forbidden fruit has already been tasted. It is already _far, far_ too late.

_What kind of fucking irony—_

“Yes?”

Aziraphale’s eyes are pale and blue and _bright_ , catching the lambent late morning glow of London through his dirty windows.

It is definitely a love letter. The room, the thing in his throat, the thing he can’t swallow around. The four corners of it tear holes into him. His admission slips out through the puncture wounds.

He should confess. All of it. Get down on his knees again in another supplication and don’t even bother asking for forgiveness because he does not deserve such a thing, surely, not after this.

But he can’t. His muscles do not react. His heart is content to throw itself against his rib cage. His joints, finally, _for once_ , stay still.

It’s paralyzing. The fear. The… whatever this is. The bone-deep knowledge borne of centuries of polite rebuffs. _He does not want you_.

He had not wanted him when the world was ending and he does not want him now, not like that. Not like this. How could he even train his throat to shape the letters of a thing he had carefully avoided saying for many thousands of mortal lifetimes? Perhaps he had lost the ability altogether. After all, what does one do with a gangrenous limb? You lop it off.

He curls his fingers into his palm and can feel the bite of half-moons pressing against the delicate tendons in his hand, is reminded acutely of how Aziraphale’s own anatomy in his neck had felt similar— alike in exteriors and barely even then.

“Thank you,” he says, instead, and means every syllable of it.

A flush spreads across Aziraphale’s cheeks, the bridge of his perfect nose, the tips of his ears.

“You don’t have to thank me, my dear,” he says, and tugs a bit on his waistcoat.

If he has a soul, he is very, very sure that it is black. He has never been very good at resisting temptation. He is the original architect of such a thing after all. A snake. Horrible. Horrific. If the mortality doesn’t kill him the guilt surely will.

“Now, I was—“ Aziraphale clears his throat, dainty and proper and he keeps shyly glancing up at Crowley through his eyelashes, “—we should—“

He exhales, clearly frustrated with himself and Crowley wants to tell him _it’s okay_. He knows what it feels like to not be able to say what you want. _We can have that in common_. Something, finally.

“—why don’t you try tying me up?”

It’s like the kickback from a shotgun. Like being kicked by a mule. And any thought Crowley may have once held about apologies or confessions— a beg for absolution— is thrown out, lit on fire, _buried_. He trips into temptation headlong. Like their intimacy. Like all of this. It feels a lot like Falling. Capital F. The first time. Slowly, he thinks, and then all at once.

“ _What_?”

“Tie me up.”

He can feel his pulse in his neck, in the roof of his mouth, his heartbeat punching up against his Adam’s apple. He is not sure where to look. It might be easier to just close his eyes.

“You told me you— erm, extolled stories of your sexual prowess,” Aziraphale starts, also apparently uncertain of where to look. “This will demonstrate that I am in fact the— the submissive partner. I’ll be forced to lie there and just— just take whatever you give me.”

It’s like some alien has come down and vacuum-sealed his arteries. He isn’t sure what it’s like to have a stroke but this must be close.

“You—“

He isn’t sure what he’d been planning to follow that word with.

“And do take some bloody time doing it,” Aziraphale warns, a fond edge to his voice. “We still have… so much time to fill.”

Every fiber of his now very human body seems to propel itself forward, urging him to tell him, _tell him_. But his tongue lies dead in his mouth, the most forked it has possibly ever been in his entire rotten life. Perhaps that had been the piece of him he’d managed to excise. The gangrenous part was not a limb but a tongue.

Aziraphale is saying something, softly, under his breath, as he presses buttons and angles the camera and looks pointedly at Crowley.

“There’s— the curtain pulls. Use those.”

His feet move him off from the doorframe and toward the windows, numb.

He can make it up to him, he thinks wildly, hopefully, wrapping his brain around the idea of tying Aziraphale to his four-poster bed. Make it up to him by making it good. If he is going to be a demon and a sorry, shitty excuse for a friend, one that might not last another decade on this planet, he ought to at least make it good.

Because it hadn’t been. The sex. The friendship. Any of it.

“And you must—“ Aziraphale is tugging on the neck of his shirt again, as if it’s too tight, even without the bow tie, “take your time. Undress me. All the way again. None of this—“

He pauses and stares at some indefinable point on the carpet between them. “This propriety nonsense.”

“Oh, of all the bloody people to—“

He stops talking, confronted with an Aziraphale that is flexing his jaw and pursing his lips and all together looking very serious. Quite terrifying.

“I mean it, Crowley,” he says, and his voice brooks no argument. “Make it last.”

Crowley sucks at his teeth and rocks back on his heels, feeling the dullness of their edge. A snake with no bite.

“Okay.”

“Besides,” Aziraphale continues as if he hadn’t heard him, rummaging through a drawer and finding another bow tie, “ _you_ are the original inventor of modesty. Not me.”

Another shotgun kickback, another mule.

“Didn’t— I mean, that was an _accident_ ,” he manages.

“Get the curtain pulls,” Aziraphale says again, off-handed, all business, as if the braided satin cord isn’t going to be used to hold his wrists steady in about ten minutes.

Crowley’s hands fumble a bit as he unties them, the dusty things. He thinks about all the times he had been up here and walked by them, had vomited in the toilet the next room over, never knowing that at some indefinable point in the future that they were going to become a prop in an impromptu sex tape. Chekhov’s curtain pulls. Future bondage equipment. The kind of thing that lights up some pleasure center in Crowley’s brain that he continues to try very hard not to think about. He swallows.

“Still,” Aziraphale sighs, and the collar of his shirt is flipped up and he is tying another hideous beige bow tie around his throat without looking, hands moving on pure muscle memory, a thing that Crowley is disgusted to learn does it for him, apparently. “You _did_ give humans the concept of shame.”

The back of Crowley’s neck erupts in gooseflesh. It’s true, of course it is, but the implications of such a statement feel sticky in the close walls of this tiny room. He had invented shame, however accidental, and now here he is, practically drowning in it. Maybe evil really _does_ sow the seeds of its own destruction.

“Right,” Aziraphale says, continuing on despite what feels like Crowley’s engulfing silence. He flips his collar down and then begins smoothing the blankets on his bed into crisp tartan plains. “Are you— well, the camera is ready and I am as well if you—“

“Right.”

He turns around with two curtain tiebacks in his hands and two meters of shame, head to toe.

“What do you—?” That idiotic hand of his rises and makes some sort of indefinable gesture.

“Anything, really,” Aziraphale breathes, not quite looking at him. The tendons in his neck are pulled tight and the pale throat keeps swallowing, over and over. “Whatever you— _anything_ ,” he repeats again, as if it helps at all. “I always—“ He swallows the sentence and looks as if he is about to vomit himself.

Crowley waits, his stomach turning itself over and over again.

“—Just,” Aziraphale looks down at his hands and fiddles with that pinky ring, worries at it. “Do what feels natural, I suppose.”

Nothing about this feels natural. He isn’t quite sure what to say, how to follow that. He scratches at the back of his neck with a free hand and swings the curtain pulls nervously with the other. “And you’re… you’re okay? You don’t need to—“ he swallows, “do anything first?”

“Oh, well,” Aziraphale says, and steps into the bathroom. He emerges a moment later with a small bottle of familiar lubricant and places it down on the dusty bedside table. Right next to a stack of books so old that the cloth covers had become threadbare. An anachronistic and surreal still life. “In case you desire penetrative acts.”

“Do _you_?”

“It is entirely up to you.”

“No, it’s entirely _not._ ”

Aziraphale’s gaze flattens.

“If I am to be your… “ and he wiggles about in the shoulders and Crowley’s mouth goes dry. “… _captive_ in this scenario I believe such a thing is up to you to decide.”

“I don’t want to,” he bites out, because he’s spent enough time guessing at what Aziraphale likes. And even if he has a handle on what kind of pastries, what kind of wine— selections that have taken decades to deduce and longer to work up the courage to use— he still is not quite sure how Aziraphale likes to be kissed. If he likes his touches hard or soft or somewhere in between. And if he does not know these things how can he possibly make it good? Which might be the only redemptive thing out of this entire mess. That he enjoys it. That Aziraphale gets something good. Even if it’s just for a moment.

But if anything Aziraphale looks oddly crumpled by the statement.

“No—“ Crowley reaches out, pulls back. He wants to grab that arm in that house coat, squeeze the muscle there, try to reassure him since his tongue is incapable of doing anything, the dumb, swollen thing.

He steels his nerves and reaches out again, slowly, folds nervous sweating fingers around Aziraphale’s wrist.

“I only meant,” he manages, and it’s like there isn’t any air in his lungs to sculpt words out of, so he carves them out of himself instead, “that I only want to do what you’d like.”

It might be the most difficult sentence he has ever said, revealing far more than he probably should have.

The wrist beneath his fingers shifts, rotates. Strong fingers wrap themselves around his forearm and Crowley stares down at them, incapable of inhaling.

“Oh,” Aziraphale says softly, and Crowley forces himself to look up, into his eyes. “You can do anything. Penetrative acts or— whatever you’d like,” he continues, and his eyes are bright, nervous, pale eyelashes blinking quickly, pink spreading along his cheeks.

“Whatever I’d like,” Crowley repeats.

He watches Aziraphale swallow. Over and over again.

“You couldn’t disappoint me.”

It’s that sentence again, the one that he had never quite gotten around to swallowing. He still can’t. And the idea of it hangs in the back of his throat until he’s choking on it. He can’t keep holding this eye contact. He might drown.

He squeezes Aziraphale’s wrist and stares at his bow tie instead, those buttons on his waistcoat. One for each day of Creation.

“But what if— are you sure?” 

“Yes,” Aziraphale says. He blinks a few times and then looks down at the floor between them. “If you desire for instruction I can get the list. We can—“

“No,” Crowley interrupts. “It’s okay. If you’re sure.”

“I am.”

“And where should I...” Crowley starts, wondering what the best, most polite way to ask about where to deposit spunk is. He tries again: “shouldn’t we figure out—“

He can feel Aziraphale’s pulse beneath his fingers, he tries to count the beats. One, two, three, four.

“Anything,” he says again.

Four days.

“That’s not what I… is there anywhere I shouldn’t— you know.”

Ninety-six hours.

“Ah,” Aziraphale seems to finally catch his meaning. “You may ejaculate wherever you desire, I don’t— I don’t mind.”

Another kickback. More mules. He squeezes Aziraphale’s wrist before he realizes it and can feel his face scrunch up beneath a particularly sticky memory.

“ _Really?_ I mean— it’s a _mess_ when it— you know— comes back out the business end.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale looks a bit shocked by the admission, and the apples of his cheeks ripen into a stiff pink. “Well, I’m sure I won’t mind. But whatever you wish is fine by me. I consent to… to whatever you’d like in this regard.”

He finally looks up, to Aziraphale’s face so close and his eyes are bright and the color of sea-glass. Something tumbled smooth by liquid or perhaps liquid themselves. A pool to drown in.

He wants to say something about how he’s still a demon, even now, even if he doesn’t look it. Alert Aziraphale to the fact that demons are sadistic by design. That’s the entire point. That he has, even now, an incredible imagination. He always has. Full of invasive thoughts and terrible ideas. The things he could do— the things Aziraphale is giving him carte blanche _permission_ to do—

“Angel,” he says softly. “M’still a demon.”

Aziraphale looks strangely adoring of the admission. As if it’s cute and not terrible. He wants to tell him to wipe that look off his face, that he is a ridiculous angel who takes all the wrong things seriously.

“I know.”

He has images of the Spanish Inquisition, some of the deeper pits of Hell. He’s seen a lot. Too much. Over six-thousand years of dirty, demonic work. It might leak out of him unintentionally. He wants to resew the seams of himself, reinforce the skin, make sure the ugly doesn’t show.

And it might. It might slide out of his mouth or guide his hand and Aziraphale does not know the terrors that are tucked up away in the meat of himself. He can’t scrub it off.

“What if I hurt you?” 

Aziraphale looks down at their hands and then gently pulls himself free, sits down on the bed, tugs off his shoes. He lines them up neatly by the tiny table with the books and the aggressive lube.

“You won’t.”

He won’t.

He blinks.

It’s that simple.

He would never.

A chill winds leisurely up his spine, settles in his shoulders. He would rather chew off his own arm with his own dull human incisors than put Aziraphale in harm.

And Aziraphale knows that about him. Knew it before Crowley did.

The room feels small again. There isn’t much air in here. The big, big feeling is back in his chest. He can’t swallow around it. 

He looks up to find Aziraphale sitting on the bed, looking over at him, white curls shot through with morning light and eyes big. Trusting.

He clamps down on that feeling. If Aziraphale loved him in that way he would’ve said it by now. His mind spins. The six-thousand years of flirting had been obvious and unwavering. He would have said it. It’s friendship. Just friendship. A favor. A save. Maybe angels can’t love romantically. Not the way demons or mostly-humans can.

Besides, Aziraphale had… fucked his way through humanity and never once told Crowley about any of his paramours. He wants to ask about them. Know them by name.

“Okay,” Crowley says, and stands in front of him. After all, every last one of those poor bastards had died. He might have that in common with them. Something he can chew on down in the mailroom. Perhaps he’ll meet one down there. 

He cannot feel his toes. “If— please say something. If there’s something you don’t like.”

“I will.”

“You will,” he repeats, mostly to himself, and pulls his sunglasses on.

“Whenever you’re ready, my dear.”

“You’re sure you don’t need anything. Water? Food.”

Aziraphale holds his gaze and shakes his head.

“No.”

“Okay.”

“Okay. Ready?”

“Ready.”

The hand rises, the right one, the dominant one. The camera turns on, the plausible deniability descends, and in one, two, three, four heartbeats and in a mostly fluid motion he flattens Aziraphale against a flat surface for the second time in one day.

“Hello,” Aziraphale breathes, again, as nonplussed and unthreatened as he had been that day Crowley had slammed him against the wall of a convent.

Their noses are nearly kissing. Crowley can feel the puff of angelic breath against his cheek.

“Hi.”

He wants to kiss him but also to stare him, to unpick the lock of his desire.

“What ever are you going to do to me?” Aziraphale says, and has the audacity to wiggle back and forth.

Crowley pulls away, looks down, eyes the hideous beige bow tie and the house coat and the crisp floral-patterned bedsheets vaguely reminiscent of grandmothers, the stretch of tan blankets. There is nothing sexy about it. _Nothing_. And yet here he is hungry for something he cannot name.

“Whatever you’d like best,” he says, and kisses him.

It is definitely getting easier, or at least _better_ , and the shine of weirdness of kissing someone who Crowley has known since the very dawn of creation has begun, at last, to dim.

There’s the thought of never doing this again, somewhere in the back of his mouth, a thing he is sharply aware that Aziraphale might taste. A certain desperation. So he pulls himself from the kiss and yanks the shirt off of his back, begins the monumental task of undressing an angel.

He starts with the socks.

More beige. Argyle patterns across the ankle and color-blocked on the toe, the heel. Sensible. He makes himself focus on how sensible they are as the pale ankle appears, cradled in his hands.

He presses a kiss against the instep, against the bone where foot hinges onto calf. He can hear Aziraphale breathing, flat on his back, but refuses to look at him. To see the entire squirming canvas at once would be too great. He would not be able to maintain the seams of himself. The ugly would surely spill out.

Socks vanquished he travels up the length of him, mashing his face into various clothed parts. A kiss to the knee beneath sensible trousers. A rub of cheek into the sensibly clothed hip. A careful butt of nose to a sensibly and doubly covered navel.

The house coat goes next.

Aziraphale keeps saying things. Small things. Tiny breathy moans that might be Crowley’s name or might be affirmations. He forces himself to think about the sensible fabric of his house coat as he threads it off Aziraphale’s arms and gets a sort of horrible pleasure out of dropping it on the floor.

“Darling,” Aziraphale scolds.

Crowley bites his jaw and says nothing.

He keeps his nose up to Aziraphale’s throat and lets his fingers lay open the buttons on the waistcoat, a thing they did once and are eager to do again. The smell of angel is deepest just behind his ear, he learns, so Crowley sticks his nose into that shadow and breathes.

He can feel Aziraphale’s pulse in his neck, can feel uncertain hands at his own hips, searching for a zip, a button. He pulls back and captures them.

“Not yet,” he breathes, and then kisses his fingertips.

He can see the whole canvas now, the whole beautiful, breathing canvas. The waistcoat is parted and Aziraphale’s chest is rising and falling visibly beneath a pale shirt, buttoned up to the neck and topped with a bow.

Crowley swallows down a sort of disgruntled sound, forcing himself to focus on that terrible bow tie, fingers reaching for it and tugging, ungentle, desperate to get it off. It falls to the floor, probably on top of that house coat, a steadily increasing pyramid of beige.

And then there are the buttons on his pale shirt, a thing he forces himself to take one at a time, button by button, starting at the bottom and ending at his throat.

His fingers breach the hem, then slide up, _up_ — all the way to the center of his chest and he can feel the heartbeat there strong beneath his skin, the tickle of soft hairs at the middle. He glances up to find Aziraphale staring curiously back at him, and realizes all at once that such a thing is too much, too big, so he stares at his hands instead. They part the pale shirt and the waistcoat and it feels like cracking open his own ribcage, revealing himself.

“Beautiful,” he hears himself murmur, and covers it up by pushing the shirt off, off— over his arms and down to his wrists where the cuff links catch, where Crowley has to swallow and focus and ease them loose.

He does not release those wrists even as the shirt and the waistcoat join the pile of clothes on the floor, as the heap of beige grows higher. He does not release them even as Aziraphale’s eyes blow wide and his belly heaves under increasingly shallow breathing.

He focuses instead on the task of stretching those arms up, up, over Aziraphale’s head and there is no easy way of doing this, no better angle. So he straddles him at the hips and there is an electrifying sort of weight he thinks he can feel if he shifts the tiniest amount to— no— _stop_ — focus— on the hands that are beneath his fingers and the wrists that are being steadily bound beneath the curtain pulls, the braided satin cord.

He can see Aziraphale’s chin tilted back, watching him from his periphery. And he tries to control the adrenaline spiking up through his neck, the way it makes the air heavy and thick and hard to breathe. He loops them over and under, into a sort of sloppy figure eight and then _back—_ tugging them up until he can tie with shaky fingers a knot into that open headboard, securing it.

It occurs to him all at once what he’s done and there’s a moment of blue-screening terror, or maybe just pure adrenaline, something hot and horrifying. He can feel sweat along his spine, on the back of his neck, can feel the moisture in the vault of his mouth evaporate as he stares down at those pale wrists, at Aziraphale’s fingers folded placidly down over his palms.

He swallows. Audibly.

And then leans back to appreciate the whole canvas (or maybe throw up).

He decides immediately that he won’t vomit, but he might bite off his own tongue.

Aziraphale is flushed from chest to cheek, splotchy pink across the breadth of his collarbones and neck and ears. He lies perfectly still on the bed, arms stretched up over him and the inward length of that skin is surprisingly vulnerable looking— pale and hairless except for blond curls where arm hinges onto chest.

It is, he realizes, an entirely odd thing to see at last the exposed armpit of someone you have known for six-thousand years. He has so rarely seen his bare arms at all and never from this angle, exposing their soft undersides, the obscene fleshiness. He is vaguely embarrassed to behold such a sight, and tries hard not to look at it.

Aziraphale is smiling at him, faintly, apparently amused. His mouth is parted and Crowley can see the row of even teeth shining back from beyond his lips, a temptation. His blue eyes are nearly closed from the angle, staring at him expectantly. Without warning, he _winks_.

It’s so sudden and so quick that Crowley believes for a moment that he’s hallucinated. Perhaps there were mind-bending substances in the toothpaste. Something in his breakfast.

He exhales. Unsteady.

Should he wink back? He isn’t sure what the appropriate reaction is. He does anyway and then quickly realizes that Aziraphale probably cannot see such an action behind his sunglasses. A marginally hysterical laugh overflows out of his throat and he bites down on it, smiling, too big. And then he reaches out, brushes gentle knuckles down the inside of that arm.

Aziraphale shivers beneath him, arms flexing with the sudden touch and then the wrists meet resistance and he looks backward up at them, gives an experimental tug.

“Excellent work.”

It would take less effort for Aziraphale to pluck a daisy than it would to break out of those ties but he decides to take the compliment on the chin.

“Thanks,” he breathes, and sits back.

There’s almost too much skin, too much angel. He does not know where to look, where to touch. All of him is so suddenly within reach and stretched out and he can see how the flush walks down his chest when he brushes at a nipple, how the skin across his arm pebbles beneath curious fingers.

Aziraphale tips his head back and his eyes close and there are beautiful silken sounds breathing up out of his throat. His wrists test again against the cord wrapped around them, that figure-eight, that tinyinfinity. All of him waiting and responsive and Crowley is finally the one conducting their song, leading them, and Aziraphale, at last, cannot run away.

_Oh._

Something implodes in his chest, his heart skips a beat and takes the air out of his mouth with it. He stares at his own hands frozen on Aziraphale’s waist, cupping his sides.

He can’t run away.

Crowley reminds himself that he _could_ , quite easily. That even if he were still a proper demon that Aziraphale could break out of these silly silken bonds and probably hoist Crowley over his shoulder without breaking a sweat.

But there’s something sticky and hard to swallow in his mouth. Bile or maybe just disappointment. That he could be so easily titillated by such a baser thing. He closes his eyes and drops his head, chin to chest, repulsed that the ugly had managed to spill out when he hadn’t been looking.

“Crowley.”

Aziraphale is whispering beneath him, shifting back and forth.

He opens his eyes.

“Kiss me.”

It’s a command. A simple one. One said in a tone that perhaps would have made him bristle at any other time but he finds that the command itself is one he will aspire to fulfill in spite of it.

So he kisses him. Softly. To make up for the fact that some part of him wants Aziraphale tied up and unable to run. Stuck with him. He squeezes his eyes shut and keeps his mouth gentle.

Aziraphale is making soft noises into him, seemingly content to be flat on his back and thoroughly kissed. Every so often the arms above them jerk up, as if ticklish or desirous of wrapping around him and something about the feeling of responsibility makes Crowley pull away.

He must be uncomfortable, Crowley realizes. There’s no pillow beneath his head, a lopsided few beneath his arms. So he fluffs them and stuffs them beneath him, cradling his neck in one hand. He double checks the wrists, makes sure he can dip a thumb beneath the bond and that the hands are okay, that the skin isn’t rubbing itself raw.

“Crowley perhaps— the rest of our clothes could come off.”

He yanks his hand back.

“Clothes. Yes.”

He starts at his own, tugging off the socks. He remembers Aziraphale bandaging his feet and decides not to focus on that. To focus instead on how insensible his own trousers are. The jeans are so tight he has to lie down on the tiny bed next to Aziraphale and shimmy out of them in what is probably the world’s most unattractive wiggle dance.

The briefs stay on.

And then it’s time for Aziraphale’s trousers. A thing he spends too long staring at before covering up his indecision with more kisses. He’s always been good at multitasking anyway. So he lets his hands take care of the too-long zip, the button, the terrifying sort of motion that is tugging them down, off Aziraphale’s hips.

He eventually has to lean back and confront what he’s doing. Confront the sensible white underthings he had seen this morning and then Aziraphale’s bare hips, the reveal of his soft, thick thighs and everything in between them. And the knees, and the calves, and those ankles again, a place he wants to kiss desperately once more if only so that he doesn’t have to look at everything, all at once.

Crowley thumbs at the waistband of his last remaining layer, staring at the lazy circles of golden fuzz on Aziraphale’s knees, and tugs them off.

It feels like it should perhaps be a bit more strange to be totally naked around each other but it _isn’t_. Not completely. They must have burnt off those nerve-endings. He still gets a jolt when their skin brushes against each other but the butterflies have quieted themselves into a sort of muted murmuration, hovering patiently in his chest.

The camera is somewhere behind them, angled, and Crowley straddles those thighs to maybe hide a bit more angel, to shield those hips and the belly, the soft give of his chest.

“Okay?” He says, feeling oddly tall on top of Aziraphale’s thighs, too big in this envelope.

“Yes,” Aziraphale breathes back, perhaps getting a bit shifty in the middle, eyes glancing curiously over Crowley’s shoulder. He has to _look_ at it, Crowley realizes, the whole time. A thing that probably only emphasizes how stark naked they both are and how they are, in theory, being watched.

He leans down and kisses him again, a distraction, hands smoothing out across the planes of Aziraphale’s chest and finding the heartbeat, that steadily increasing rhythm.

“Mmph.”

Aziraphale makes soft noises of surprise and maybe delight into his mouth, hands testing at the rope once more, desirous maybe of being in Crowley’s hair again, a fantasy he lets himself indulge for all of two seconds before snapping it back.

No fantasizing. Not here while Aziraphale is flat on his back and can’t run away and forced to look over Crowley’s shoulder at his biggest mistake.

He makes a noise of frustration and contempt into their kiss, then down against Aziraphale’s jaw, wanting to put teeth into it, a stamp on his body that he can look at later and remind himself that for a moment in time the sand in the hourglass had paused.

And then he sews up the ugly again. Reinforces the seams. Kisses only with soft lips and gentle tongue, with teeth that have no bite.

He lets his hands trace the length of Aziraphale’s arms, find the places, the wrists, that are swiftly turning pink beneath the restraints. The pulse there is strong and deep, a current of power thrumming beneath the skin. Aziraphale makes a soft, broken noise as he thumbs across the breadth of it.

And then Crowley yanks his own wrist up close to his mouth, tugs unceremoniously at the strap of his watch with his teeth, freeing it. If Aziraphale is this exposed, this laid out, he should be too. It’s only fair.

He doesn’t know why he does it. Why it feels right to take that watch, the only thing he had ever rightfully paid for in real human currency, and wrap it around Aziraphale’s wrist. The left one. The side that Crowley had always stood on and would always protect. He can cover that side. That wrist. He’ll cover him.

It looks incredibly wrong on Aziraphale. It’s too stark. Too big. Too black. The mechanical movement of the numbers looks entirely unnatural on Aziraphale’s skin. Crowley isn’t sure if anything this technologically advanced has ever even touched him.

Aziraphale is looking up at it curiously, mouth open and he can see the perfect row of dull angelic teeth in there, a semicircle of mathematical precision.

He looks back down and they lock eyes, something odd and stilted passing between them, a rearranging.

“What—“

Aziraphale moves his wrists, looks up at them again.

“Your watch,” he breathes.

“Yeah.”

Aziraphale licks his lips and the white on the underside of his arms is so pale that Crowley can see the blue of his veins pushing through it.

“It’s heavy.”

He flexes his jaw and is reminded of how they seem to say two things at once, always, and a hole opens up in his chest that the butterflies seem to quietly drop inside.

“Yeah.”

He watches Aziraphale’s left wrist turn, rotate in its tiny infinite prison, that folded figure-eight.

“I like it.”

And just like that the chasm unwinds itself, the butterflies reverse. That big, big feeling is back and suffocating him and he nearly chokes, forcing himself to look down at the hollow of Aziraphale’s throat, the pulse there.

He lays himself out flat, kissing down into an angelic chest, forearms flat on the bed. He holds his weight up and fantasizes about unfolding his wings to mantle out behind him, to shield again the vulnerable expanse of Aziraphale’s underarms. Blot out the view. Flood it with black.

The smell of angel is everywhere, he realizes, not just tucked up into the shadow behind his ear. It lingers in the hollow of his throat, down beneath his breastbone, in the gentle curve of his navel. He inhales as he moves down the length of him, sticking his nose into places he never thought he’d see let alone smell.

And then all at once he runs out of torso, is confronted with the soft curls between his hipbones, darker than the hair on his head. He’s hard, has been for a while now, another thing that Crowley has tried very hard not to think about.

He looks up.

“Can I?”

Aziraphale’s eyes are nearly black from this angle, shaded as they are by his eyelashes.

“You may.”

So he takes him first in his hand and then in his mouth, closing his eyes and delighting in the sound of the cord tugging against the headboard, the broken of gasp of Aziraphale saying his name.

There are knees bracketing his shoulders, holding him tightly, the belly in front of him shudders beneath unsteady breathing.

“Crowley—“

There’s a high breathy sound above him and a taste like sunshine in his mouth, hips in his hands that won’t stay still. He encourages their restless shifting.

“Oh, it’s—“

His voice is thin and stretched, a reedy instrument. And there are no fervent fingers in his hair, tugging him away, only the airy celestial sound of Aziraphale cutting off his own words with musical whimpers.

Crowley pulls back, presses a kiss into that restless hipbone.

“It’s what?”

Aziraphale’s face is turned and pressed into his own arm, breathing heavily.

“It’s so good.”

He bites the hip, a warning.

“I mean— it’s terrible. Oh, you wily thing. Luring me into your depravity.”

He bites a bit harder, at the overacting and to hide his smile.

“Good,” he murmurs, and hopes only Aziraphale can hear it. “I hope so.”

The amazing thing about Aziraphale not being able to run away, Crowley thinks, some time later, is that he finally gets to control the pace.

He is not sure how long it has been, lying spread between Aziraphale’s thighs, but his jaw is beginning to hurt and he has already considered the pros and cons of the the dullness of his teeth. He imagines what it will be like doing this with fangs that contain any degree of sharpness, and quickly regrets it.

Aziraphale has given up on making words entirely and has instead taken to creating a series of increasingly subvocal sounds in his throat.

Finally, the knees that are up against Crowley’s ribs give a sharp and painful squeeze.

“Stop— wait—“

The word _stop_ might as well be a collar around his throat. He yanks himself backward and is careful not to touch him.

“Did I hurt you?”

“No.” Aziraphale’s chest is heaving and there is sweat everywhere— glistening in the morning light. “Just— too close.”

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

Aziraphale picks up his head and stares down at him, eyes dark and glittering and there’s a strange sort of mischievous energy there that Crowley can’t quite understand.

“Fuck me.”

He closes his eyes and presses his hips down into the bed.

“ _Angel_.”

The hips in front of him shift back and forth.

“Yes?”

He opens his eyes again and can’t quite look at him because he is not sure where the act ends and the Aziraphale begins and if he is going to have to survive, if he is going to have to keep living here, on earth— going on more platonic dinner dates and picnics to the park— he isn’t sure he’ll be able to do it with this memory in place.

“Don’t— you don’t have to say stuff like that.”

“You were just giving me oral sex,” he whispers back. “I think we’re past impropriety.”

_You_ did _give humans the concept of shame_.

He closes his eyes and rests his forehead against a thigh, gritting his teeth.

“Yes, but you don’t have to—“

The word that swallows itself is _act_ , but he does, of course he does. That’s what they’re doing. _Acting_.

He looks up, lying on his belly, still a snake in spirit. Duplicitous.

Aziraphale shifts back and forth, the knot bumping noisily against the headboard.

“Please me.”

His eyes are probably the size of the moon, peeking up from between Aziraphale’s thighs.

“Please you,” he repeats.

“Yes, darling. Won’t you?”

His stomach rolls, the butterflies lurch. _Please me_. It’s an entirely Aziraphalean phrase, one he had probably heard at some point in their shared history but never directed _at_ him. It’s so real and so familiar that it’s nearly harder to swallow than _fuck me_. He wants to take it back, tell him to keep acting, at least when this is all over he knows he’ll never hear Aziraphale say _fuck_ again. 

“Yeah,” he breathes, and kisses the inside of a thigh, where those marks are, the tallies of their dates. “I’ll try.”

So he dismantles the anachronistic still life, takes the plastic tube of lubricant, squeezes it out onto his hand. And this time he _warms_ it, remembering his first go at this, the way he had smeared cold lube onto Aziraphale’s thigh and had endeavored entirely not to look. Perhaps he still shouldn’t. 

But then those thighs are lifting and his knees and hinging and he _has_ to look, really, because Aziraphale might as well be forcing him to and _after all_ , he reminds himself, the angel had held no such qualms about looking at _him_.

So he looks. He does not poke Aziraphale’s thigh. He does not smear lube anywhere except where it should be. It’s nice. It’s okay. It’s _better_ than okay.

Aziraphale has his head tilted back and his teeth sinking into his bottom lip, making nonsense sounds in his throat.

Crowley paints signs into his skin, payback. A circle. A cross. An X. A heart. He makes the sign of his true name and there are no sparks to it, there’s no fire in his fingertips.

“Laying wards on me?” Aziraphale breathes, somewhere above him, and Crowley does not look up.

“I wish.”

He won’t rush this time, not with the sand in the hourglass frozen and the camera filling, not with Aziraphale like _this_ , finally. He hauls himself up the length of angel and kisses him, pressing a finger inside.

“ _Oh_.”

“Okay?”

“You taste like me.”

Crowley can’t bear to look in his eyes, so he looks at his mouth instead.

“You’re welcome,” he murmurs, and kisses him again.

There are more fingers, more interruptions for lube, more kisses. On the third time adding lubricant Aziraphale huffs out an annoyed breath and fixes him with a steely gaze.

“I think there’s quite enough.”

“I was taught to use more than you’d think.”

The blood in his veins reverses, flows against gravity to this tips of his ears. Perhaps he had said too much.

“You fiend.”

It’s said with such utter breathlessness, such fondness, that the butterflies in his chest explode outward, fill up his throat. He tucks his face up beneath Aziraphale’s jaw and has to keep reminding himself that this is real— he is naked on a bed with Aziraphale, learning how his body works.

There’s a spot there, somewhere, that he has been struggling to find or to at least stimulate effectively. He has half a mind of asking but reasons that someone of his alleged sexual prowess surely wouldn’t have to, trying to remember Aziraphale’s voice the first time: _up, over,_ there _._ He pulls his fingers free.

“At this rate you’re going to use the entire bottle, my dear.”

It is down near empty, and he thinks that maybe he should stop stalling.

“I told you we should’ve bought the industrial sized one.”

Aziraphale breathes out a laugh but there’s something shaky and tightly strung about it. Crowley realizes all at once that he’s covered in sweat, that the pale insides of his arms are flushed pink. He does not know how long they have been at this, how long he has been keeping Aziraphale along some kind of edge.

“I do not trust the… the safety of third-party seller lubricant on the Ebay,” Aziraphale manages, fingers flexing and unflexing above his head.

“May I use the rest of this then?” Crowley asks, and looks down at himself and then back up. “On me? …In you?”

“I’ve been waiting for you to do so.”

His throat makes a sound that is entirely consonants and is abruptly aware of all of his skin, how warm the air is in this room. He wonders if the windows are fogging from their heavy breathing, if the camera lens is blurry from condensation.

“Okay.”

He lifts a thigh and settles himself between Aziraphale’s legs, finding it somehow easier this time to look directly between them and not at his face.

Aziraphale’s hips are shifting, the legs lifting, opening himself up. The sex against his belly looks flushed and painfully swollen and Crowley brushes a hand against it, uncertain.

Aziraphale muffles a whimper into his arm, head turned and eyes closed and here’s this moment again, another memory he will have to carry if he makes it through this. He imagines taking Aziraphale for a drive across the English countryside, after, if he lives, picnicking in The Cotswolds and haunted by this moment. Trying to act normal, a friend, just drinking wine and being pleasant when he knows what Aziraphale sounds like when stripped of his sensible clothes and tied to a bed.

“Please,” Aziraphale is murmuring into his arm. “Please me.”

He squeezes out the rest of the bottle into his hand and slicks it over himself, then over Aziraphale, again, for good measure. He can still taste the memory of their first time on the carpet downstairs, the way he had started and his body had clenched and Crowley had clearly done something wrong, gone too fast.

Not this time.

It’s a bad angle, He needs a pillow beneath Aziraphale’s hips or two or three. Something to raise him up. But there are no extra pillows and with the way Aziraphale is breathing Crowley is vaguely certain he’d discorporate him himself if he waits any longer.

It’s like the first time, all over again.

Too hot, too tight, too much. He can feel it down in his toes, in the base of his spine. He can’t control his breathing, can’t control the ugly seams of himself as strange whimpers edge themselves out of his throat. But it’s also easier this time. Smoother. Slicker.

“You— okay?” He manages, halfway and holding himself very, very still.

“Yes.”

Aziraphale’s jaw is flexed and his hands have migrated up to hold onto the open framework of the headboard, squeezing so tightly Crowley can see the whites of his knuckles.

He slides out, back in a bit more— and the angle still sucks and there’s some sort of strange tingling in his right thigh but it’s blanketed by the butterflies in his stomach, the pleasure licking up his spine, an abrupt taste of sunshine in his mouth.

“More.”

He doesn’t bristle at the command this time. Something about Aziraphale being tied up maybe, or an override to please him. After all if he does everything right, everything Aziraphale wants, maybe he won’t run away.

Another kickback. Nearly a blue-screen.

“Come on,” Aziraphale is moaning, legs wrapping clean around Crowley’s waist and locking at the ankle, breaking his thoughts. “More.”

He flexes into him, all the way.

But if anything the angle has become harder, more impossible, locked in the strength of Aziraphale’s thighs. He could squeeze him clean in half. Bisect him. Lop off the gangrenous heart from the rest of him.

The muscle in his hip pulses.

“You can do it,” Aziraphale gasps and his eyes roll up closed, mouth closing around a moan. “I’ve— seen the way you walk.”

Cheeky bloody _bastard_. He loves him. It’s horrible. It’s too much. Crowley snaps his hips up, endeavoring to be obedient, make him stay, trying to find that—

“ _Fuck_.”

He’d be smiling if he weren’t too busy chewing on his own lip, holding himself off. It’s too big. Too much again. It’s going to run over the edges of himself. He can’t catch his breath.

_I mean it Crowley, make it last_.

If he does it right, he’ll stay. No rope. Maybe. Hopefully.

“More.”

He can feel sweat rolling down his spine. His lungs burn. Every muscle feels stretched to its limit.

Aziraphale opens his eyes and Crowley stops, frightened that perhaps he had done something wrong, misread the signs.

But Aziraphale just rolls his hips up, leisurely, and Crowley bites down so hard his jaw cramps.

“You said you _railed an angel_ ,” Aziraphale breathes, eyes half-lidded and mouth parted, breathing shallowly. “So what are you waiting for?”

Crowley’s heart suctions to the roof of his mouth, he chokes on his want. Capital F falling. Except there’s nothing slow about it this time. He’ll remember this moment over tea and biscuits and Aziraphale recruiting him to organize the bookshop. He’ll wear it like a brand. Shelve the memory next to the ugly.

He can feel his eyes blow wide. 

Four days.

“You sure?” He whispers, and thinks of those seams, that imagination, the ugly bits of himself ready to break through.

“Yes.”

Ninety-six hours.

Okay.

There’s no finesse. Just a clawing heat and liquid motion. Another exercise in control, in frustration— pushing himself up and out and flexing as hard as he’ll let himself, as hard as the angle allows. And it’s a _shit_ angle, the weird singing nerves in his hip nearly outweigh the singing nerves of the rest of him, everywhere. He turns his head and bites down into the muscle of his own arm, holding off, thinking again of third-party Ebay sellers and Aziraphale’s old computer, the hideous beige sheets they’re fucking on that he relishes wiping his lube-covered hands over.

He’s close— too close, and it takes him a minute to realize the taste of yellow in his mouth is from _Aziraphale—_ enacting some feat of angelic willpower to keep it going.

“You bastard,” he grits out, and reaches between them to get a hand on him.

Aziraphale stops biting his lip long enough to smile or perhaps laugh and without the teeth to stop it a cry rips out of his throat.

“ _More_.”

And it’s easy for him to say, using magic to extend himself forever while Crowley has to think about ducks— a thing he quickly has to _stop_ thinking about because water slides off of them and water also slides off of Aziraphale’s _wings_ and—

“Crowley— I’m—“

The magic runs out, or Aziraphale gives up, and the headboard creaks as he squeezes it in his hands.

“ _Crowley_.”

He has enough sense to realize what’s happening and stroke him through it. Until at last the unbearable flex of muscle squeezes rational thought out of his body and everything else with it. His forked tongue shapes the sound of _love you_ but there’s no air behind it, and Aziraphale’s eyes are closed.

He’s paralyzed, a wire strung so tight he is surely going to snap, hips moving on something he didn’t realize demons possessed— instinct maybe, something inescapable.

He floats slowly down, after. Falling again.

But the pleasure of an afterglow is cut by the piercing agony of a muscle in his side and he is thrown once again into the realities of his human skin— the room is suddenly too cold, his sweat is swiftly drying, the exterior parts of himself feel horribly, horrifically exposed.

And he’s still inside Aziraphale.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he breathes, winces, face screwing up behind what is a strange and involuntary flexing of a muscle he did not know he had.

There’s a finger snap, and the warm legs around his hips disappear.

“Are you all right?”

“Just— _hip_ ,” he bites out.

“ _Hip?_ ”

“It’s fine, here I’ll—“

He reaches up and with shaking fingers unties the knot, releases the loop, that tiny infinity. The watch is still on Aziraphale’s wrist, too big and too clunky and he feels vaguely embarrassed for having put it there at all.

He should probably pull out, remembering how he had felt in Aziraphale’s position.

“Sorry.”

The muscle in his hip sings again, sharply, and the motion he makes removing himself from Aziraphale is probably too slow, too awkward. There’s a familiar wet sound as he pulls himself free and he can feel the blood rise straight up to his ears.

Aziraphale looks equally affronted, as if appalled that his body had the audacity to do something he had not asked for.

“I— apologies— that’s really rather rude—“

“Oh, shut up,” Crowley says. “I was the one— pushing air into you,” he finishes and his ears feel ready to light on fire.

“Oh, but when it’s _you_ —“

“I thought you hadn’t heard it.”

Aziraphale opens his mouth surely to rebuttal but Crowley interrupts his future argument with a cry, rolling away to lie flat on the tiny corner of bed left unoccupied.

“What’s the matter with you?” Aziraphale asks, propped up on his elbows.

“ _Hip_ ,” he wheezes.

“Oh, dear.”

There are hands on him suddenly, along his side, and then as if aware of what he is doing they retreat.

“I’m sorry I shouldn’t have—“

“S’fine.”

“Where is it?”

“Here.”

He nods down at his right side and presses a hand into the offending muscle, running down his thigh.

“Does this mean I’m getting too old for this?” He grits out.

“Hush.”

Aziraphale’s hands are on him again, at his naked hip, down the thigh. His fingers push in and rub.

“Muscle cramp,” he murmurs. “You haven’t been drinking enough water.”

“I’m tired of pissing.”

Aziraphale ignores him, working into the give of his muscles. The tightness eventually releases and Crowley becomes aware all at once of what’s happening— how they are both naked and sweaty and engaging in this strange non-sexual touch. A thing that is somehow more foreign that penetrative sex.

They’re both a few degrees north of _sticky_. Silicone lubricant had ended up smeared across them and the bed in an alarming number of places. The white mess of Aziraphale’s spend is still splattered across his chest. Which means—

“I should’ve cleaned you up.”

He blurts it out and then seals his mouth shut, gritting his teeth.

He watches the flush of blood walk from Aziraphale’s chest to his cheeks, to the tips of his ears, as if following Crowley’s same progression of realizing what he’d been doing. His hands stop and fold themselves over his lap.

“It’s quite alright.”

“We could—“

“Shower?”

He thinks maybe he’d like a cigarette, or at the very least something to do with his hands, his mouth, something to prevent him from getting in any more trouble.

“Okay,” he breathes, and reasons with himself that if he ever gets his powers back he’ll prevent himself from blushing ever again.

“Yes. Shower.”

Aziraphale pauses for a moment and then reaches forward with both hands, lifting the sunglasses off of his face. The room suddenly in full color again. He can see now that the flush on his body matches Aziraphale’s. That at least the embarrassment is shared.

And before when he couldn’t bring himself to look at him now he _can’t stop_ , staring straight into his eyes and the butterflies are broiling in his belly, the big big feeling is stuck in his throat.

“Did I disappoint you?”

He’s said it aloud. A thing he realizes all at once when Aziraphale quirks a lip back at him, folding up the arms of the sunglasses.

His stomach balls up and lodges itself in the hollow of his throat. Right between the clavicles.

“I already told you,” Aziraphale says, and they’re so sticky, there are so many fluids smeared between them that the tableau once again becomes surreal. But hopeful maybe. Surreal but only because it he won’t let himself believe that it’s real, it happened.

“You couldn’t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for all of your lovely comments <3 I adore them.

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at me on [Tumblr!](https://racketghost.tumblr.com)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [table read](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23694157) by [attheborder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/attheborder/pseuds/attheborder)
  * [Age Cannot Wither](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23479810) by [YamiSnuffles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/YamiSnuffles/pseuds/YamiSnuffles)
  * [On the List: Crowley's Chair](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25077931) by [Nymphalis_antiopa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nymphalis_antiopa/pseuds/Nymphalis_antiopa)
  * [A Wild Thing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27000697) by [elf_mischief](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elf_mischief/pseuds/elf_mischief)




End file.
